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Top Jack Vance Quotes

Browse top 55 most favorite famous quotes and sayings by Jack Vance.

Favorite Jack Vance Quotes

1. "My talismans are not obviously useless." ~ Jack Vance
2. "I understand the gist of your speculation,' said Rhialto. 'It is most likely nuncupatory." ~ Jack Vance
3. "I am not Cugel the Clever for nothing!" ~ Jack Vance
4. "What are your fees?" inquired Guyal cautiously. "I respond to three questions," stated the augur. "For twenty terces I phrase the answer in clear and actionable language; for ten I use the language of cant, which occasionally admits of ambiguity; for five, I speak a parable which you must interpret as you will; and for one terce, I babble in an unknown tongue." ~ Jack Vance
5. "While we are alive we should sit among colored lights and taste good wines, and discuss our adventures in far places; when we are dead, the opportunity is past." ~ Jack Vance
6. "Law cannot reach where enforcement will not follow. —Popular aphorism." ~ Jack Vance
7. "Mischief moves somewhere near and I must blast it with my magic." ~ Jack Vance
8. "Beauty is a luster which love bestows to guile the eye. Therefore it may be said that only when the brain is without love will the eye look and see no beauty." ~ Jack Vance
9. "Cease the bickering! I am indulging the exotic whims of a beautiful princess and must not be distracted." ~ Jack Vance
10. "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 life of satisfaction and peace. Do you recall this?""Yes, Grandfather.""The learning you shall have. You will learn patience and resource, the ability of your hands and your mind. You will have useful work: the destruction of evil men. What work could be more useful? This is Beyond; you will find that your work is never done—so therefore you may never know life of peace. However, I guarantee you ample satisfaction, for I will teach you to crave the blood of these men more than the flesh of woman."The old man had been as good as his word." ~ Jack Vance
11. "Freedom, privileges, options, must constantly be exercised, even at the risk of inconvenience. Otherwise they fall into desuetude and become unfashionable, unorthodox—finally irregulationary." ~ Jack Vance
12. "The symbologist made a cryptic sign. "That remains to be seen, as the cat said who voided into the sugar bowl." ~ Jack Vance
13. "I am a dull fellow...my person reeks, my conversation consists of insipid platitudes." ~ Jack Vance
14. "The banquet proceeded. The first course, a mince of olives, shrimp and onions baked in oyster shells with cheese and parsley was followed by a soup of tunny, cockles and winkles simmered in white wine with leeks and dill. Then, in order, came a service of broiled quail stuffed with morels, served on slices of good white bread, with side dishes of green peas; artichokes cooked in wine and butter, with a salad of garden greens; then tripes and sausages with pickled cabbage; then a noble saddle of venison glazed with cherry sauce and served with barley first simmered in broth, then fried with garlic and sage; then honey-cakes, nuts and oranges; and all the while the goblets flowed full with noble Voluspa and San Sue from Watershade, along with the tart green muscat wine of Dascinet." ~ Jack Vance
15. "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 human race. Of all wars, these are the most detestable, since they are waged for no tangible gain, but only to impose a set of arbitrary credos upon another's mind." ~ Jack Vance
16. "Twango's hospitality, though largely symbolic, does him credit." ~ Jack Vance
17. "The Silver Samarsanda stood above the Jardeen, behind a line of tall pencil cypress: an irregular bulk of masonry, plastered and whitewashed, with a wide, many-slanted roof of mossy tiles. Beside the entrance five colored lanterns hung in a vertical line: deep green, a dark, smoky scarlet, a gay light green, violet, and once more dark scarlet; and at the bottom, slightly to the side, a small, steady yellow lamp, the purport of all being: Never neglect the wonder of conscious existence, which too soon comes to an end!" ~ Jack Vance
18. "I can resolve your perplexity,' said Fianosther. ‘Your booth occupies the site of the old gibbet, and has absorbed unlucky essences. But I thought to notice you examining the manner in which the timbers of my booth are joined. You will obtain a better view from within, but first I must shorten the chain of the captive erb which roams the premises during the night.'‘No need,' said Cugel. ‘My interest was cursory." ~ Jack Vance
19. "Excellent; all is well. The 'everlasting tedium' exactly countervenes the 'immediate onset of death' and I am left only with the 'canker' which, in the person of Firx, already afflicts me. One must use his wits in dealing with maledictions." ~ Jack Vance
20. "A voice issued from the mirror..."The characters read thus: 'Suldrun, sweet Suldrun, leave this room before harm arrives upon you!'" Suldrun looked about her. "What would harm me?""Let the bottled imps clamp your hair or your fingers and you will learn the meaning of harm."The two heads spoke at the same time: "What a wicked remark! We are as faithful as doves." "Oh! It is bitter to be maligned, when we cannot seek redress for the wrong!" ~ Jack Vance
21. "The Vine of Life grows a single melon. The color of the heart is unknown until the rind is split." ~ Jack Vance
22. "My clever baton holds your unnatural sorcery in abeyance." ~ Jack Vance
23. "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." ~ Jack Vance
24. "I was a carpenter for a time and everybody watches what you do." ~ Jack Vance
25. "Sometimes some of these little side excursions are useful and I manage to fit them in the book somewhere." ~ Jack Vance
26. "These are just the tip of the iceberg, because I read and read and read. I read everything." ~ Jack Vance
27. "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." ~ Jack Vance
28. "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 of quagmire, thorn, eel-vine skiver tussock. A single road leads from city down to jungle; the prisoner is merely locked out of the city. Escape is at his option; he may flee as far through the jungle as he sees fit: the entire continent is at his disposal. But no prisoner ever ventures far from the gate; and, when his presence is required, it is only necessary to unlock the gate and call his name." ~ Jack Vance
29. "What exists is real; therefore it is tragic, since whatever lives must die. Only fantasy, the vapors rising from sheer nonsense, can now excite my laughter." ~ Jack Vance
30. "Only the fact of my broken limbs prevents me from leaping at your throat." ~ Jack Vance
31. "We prostrate ourselves before the fish-god Yob, who seems as efficacious as any." ~ Jack Vance
32. "One becomes sated with platitudes no less than honey, so that one often breaks another's bones in one's vexation." ~ Jack Vance
33. "Conversation! Supple sentences, with first and second meanings and overtones beyond, outrageous challenges with cleverly planned slip-points, rebuttals of elegant brevity; deceptions and guiles, patient explanations of the obvious, fleeting allusions to the unthinkable. As a preliminary, the conversationalist must gauge the mood, the intelligence and the verbal facility of the company. To this end, a few words of pedantic exposition often prove invaluable." ~ Jack Vance
34. "I suffer from a spiritual malaise which manifests itself in outbursts of vicious rage." ~ Jack Vance
35. "What is an evil man? The man is evil who coerces obedience to his private ends, destroys beauty, produces pain, extinguishes life." ~ Jack Vance
36. "As I mentioned, I was a carpenter for a time." ~ Jack Vance
37. "But I've sure worked at jobs where I have been under inspection." ~ Jack Vance
38. "But, for instance, when I was awfully young, I read all the Oz books. They were an enormous influence on me." ~ Jack Vance
39. "I got done writing Ports of Call and suddenly realized I have far too much material for the book." ~ Jack Vance
40. "I haven't sold to the movies. In other words, I haven't gotten any enormous checks yet." ~ Jack Vance
41. "I just wrote what I felt like writing since they seemed to sell." ~ Jack Vance
42. "I never made lots of money at it, but I sold enough." ~ Jack Vance
43. "I never worked in an office in my life." ~ Jack Vance
44. "I thought that automobiles were going to have mufflers and go fast and airplanes were going to fly fast." ~ Jack Vance
45. "I was an omnivore at reading, so that everything I ever read contributed." ~ Jack Vance
46. "I worked for half a cent a word. I'm not a fast writer to begin with, so for the first few years I had do other things." ~ Jack Vance
47. "I'd never been published when I was young." ~ Jack Vance
48. "In fact, almost every job you get somebody watching you." ~ Jack Vance
49. "Good music always defeats bad luck." ~ Jack Vance
50. "On the heights above the river Xzan, at the site of certain ancient ruins, Iucounu the Laughing Magician had built a manse to his private taste: an eccentric structure of steep gables, balconies, sky-walks, cupolas, together with three spiral green glass towers through which the red sunlight shone in twisted glints and peculiar colors." ~ Jack Vance
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Today's Quote

What I see here, what I feel here is that people in your world believe spirituality isn't distant. It's close and real. Religion seems born in the home, stays in the home. I mean, the services are even held in the home. And there's not one person in charge, one speaker set above the others. It's farmers and carpenters, and well, just average folk speaking spontaneously about the message they find in the Bible. [...] A message from the heart to the heart."
Author: Barbara Cameron

What Did Jack Vance Talk About?

Wit
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Here
Con
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Act
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Sin
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Ear
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Thou
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Call
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Owe
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Fact
May
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