Jack Vance Quotations

Vance has a genius in evoking the beauty of strangeness, the strangeness of beauty.

I give dignity second place to expedience.

It is useless, after all, to complain against inexorable reality.

The life we've been leading couldn't last forever. It's a wonder it lasted as long as it did.

In the end, death came uniformly to all, and all extracted as much satisfaction from their dying as this essentially graceless process could afford.

How to know, oh how to know! All is relative ease and facility in orthodoxy, yet how can it be denied that good is in itself undeniable? Absolutes are the most uncertain of all formulations, while the uncertainties are the most real...

If there were no such creatures as minstrel-maidens, it would be necessary to invent them.

The less a writer discusses his work and himself the better. The master chef slaughters no chickens in the dining room; the doctor writes prescriptions in Latin; the magician hides his hinges, mirrors, and trapdoors with the utmost care.

Count me not your friend but the enemy of your enemies.

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