Quotes by Roger Zelazny

“It is anticipation and recollection that fill the heartnever the sensation of the moment.”

“I saw my earlier selves as different people, acquaintances I had outgrown. I wondered how I could ever have been some of them.”

“Nobody steals books but your friends.”

“To paraphrase Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear, and all those guys, "I wish I had known this some time ago.”

“Then every man would be as a god, you see. The result of this, of course, would be that there would no longer be any gods, only men. We would give them knowledge of the sciences and the arts, which...”

“I know, too, that death is the only god who comes when you call.”

“Don't wake me for the end of the world unless it has very good special effects.”

“There's no such thing as civilization. The word just means the art of living in cities.”

“It was almost a mystical experience. I do not know how else to put it. My mind outran time as he neared, and it was as though I had an eternity to ponder the approach of this man who was my brother...”

“It is a pain in the ass waiting around for someone to try to kill you.”

“I watched the spinning stars, grateful, sad and proud, as only a man who has outlived his destiny and realizes he might yet forge himself another, can be.”

“Why could you not have left me as I was, in the sea of being?""Because the world has need of your humility, your piety, your great teaching and your Machiavellian scheming.”

“Occasionally, there arises a writing situation where you see an alternative to what you are doing, a mad, wild gamble of a way for handling something, which may leave you looking stupid, ridiculous...”

“Good evening, Lord Corwin,' said the lean, cadaverous figure who rested against a storage rack, smoking his pipe, grinning around it.Good evening, Roger. How are things in the nether world?'A rat, ...”

“When inspiration is silent reason tires quickly.”

“A totally nondenominational prayer: Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that I be forgiven for anything I may have done or failed to d...”

“The four points of the compass be logic, knowledge, wisdom and the unknown....To bow before the one is to lose sight of the three.”

“Once a Buddha, always a Buddha, Sam. Dust off some of your old parables. You have about fifteen minutes.' Sam held out his hand. "Give me some tobacco and a paper.”

“Years have passed, I suppose. I'm not really counting them anymore. But I think of this thing often: Perhaps there is a Golden Age someplace, a Renaissance for me sometime, a special time somewhere...”

“I'm very gullible when it comes to my own words. I believe everything I say, though I know I am a liar.”