Quotes by Jack Vance

“Good music always defeats bad luck.”

“I understand the gist of your speculation,' said Rhialto. 'It is most likely nuncupatory.”

“I am not Cugel the Clever for nothing!”

“One becomes sated with platitudes no less than honey, so that one often breaks another's bones in one's vexation.”

“I would offer congratulations were it not for this tentacle gripping my leg.”

“Where was his knife, upon which he relied? He had cut cheese for their noonday meal, and had packed the knife away with the cheese.Aillas said: 'Sir, before we continue with this matter, may I offe...”

“If religions are diseases of the human psyche, as the philosopher Grintholde asserts, then religious wars must be reckoned the resultant sores and cankers infecting the aggregate corpus of the huma...”

“Twango's hospitality, though largely symbolic, does him credit.”

“Until work has reached its previous stage nympharium privileges are denied to all.”

“There had been an attempt to humiliate him. It had not succeeded. He had paid, but pain, like pleasure, has no duration. Pride was an entity more persistent.”

“How I hate you," he said softly. "If hate were stone I could build a tower into the clouds.”

“Star-watching: at night the stars of Alastor Cluster blaze in profusion. The atmosphere refracts their light; the sky quivers with beams, glitters, and errant flashes. The Trills go out into their ...”

“Law cannot reach where enforcement will not follow. Popular aphorism.”

“When the ships had lifted, they returned across the river to the silence of death. Then his grandfather told him, "Many fine things your father had planned for you: learning and useful work and a l...”

“Guyal of Sfere had been born one apart from his fellows and early proved a source of vexation for his sire. Normal in outward configuration, there existed within his mind a void that ached for nour...”

“The Brinktown jail is one of the most ingenious ever propounded by civic authorities. It must be remembered that Brinktown occupies the surface of a volcanic butte, overlooking a trackless jungle o...”

“What is peace? Balance three iron skewers tip to tip, one upon the other; at the summit, emplace an egg, so that it too poises static in mid-air, and there you have the condition of peace in this w...”

“But I'm so slow on it because I find it terribly hard writing blind on computers. The computer speaks to me, but it's just so slow, I'm so terribly slow using it.”

“Freedom, privileges, options, must constantly be exercised, even at the risk of inconvenience. Otherwise they fall into desuetude and become unfashionable, unorthodoxfinally irregulationary.”

“The Vine of Life grows a single melon. The color of the heart is unknown until the rind is split.”