Avram Davidson Quotes

“Things oughtn’t to be the way they are, altogether. But letting a madman burn down the barn is no way to improve them.”

Source: The Phoenix and the Mirror (1969), Chapter 9

“Though you expel Nature with a pitchfork, she will always return.”

Source: Rogue Dragon (1965), Chapter V (p. 49)

“A querulous whine that was almost a question was succeeded by a deep gobble that was almost an answer.”

Vergil in Averno (1987)

“The ceremony was long and intricate, probably none of them could have explained why half of it was done, and the explanations for the other half would probably have been thoroughly incorrect.”

Source: The Phoenix and the Mirror (1969), Chapter 1

“It had not been precisely a fruitful meeting, but it had been a long one.”

Source: The Phoenix and the Mirror (1969), Chapter 10

“The short man was all of a piece, but there was nothing reassuring in this; it was a piece of the same material that too many high school principals, boys’ camp directors, and military and naval officers are made of: a texture or quality often dignified by the description, “ability to command”—the desire to bully, override, bear down—the capacity to do so by virtue of office—the habit of having done so for a long time and the confidence of continuing to do so for a long time.”

Vergil in Averno (1987)

Avram Davidson Quotes about time

“Clearly this was no time to ask if they should first define their terms. Nor, for that matter, had Socrates had to define the bowl of hemlock.”

Source: Masters of the Maze (1965), Chapter 7 (p. 85)

“There was an inn…which kept no register of…a number of seamstresses and tailors who lacked time and place and perhaps inclination to weave the cloths they cut and sewed, depending instead on the activities of those who preferred not to vex the original owners with the tiresome bookkeeping inseparable from purchase.”

Vergil in Averno (1987)

“In general I find little girls enchanting. What a shame they grow up to be big girls and make our lives as miserable as we allow them, and oft-times more.”

Source: Rogue Dragon (1965), Chapter VIII (p. 81)

“The fact that you know the questions,” he said, a mite grudgingly, “tends to make me think you might really know the answers.”

My Boy Friend’s Name is Jello (p. 95)
Short fiction, Or All the Seas with Oysters (1962)

Avram Davidson Quotes

“She spun, as a matter of form and status alone, her woollen yarn and her oft-breaking thread. What else did she spin? he wondered. And the answer, not spoken aloud, was, a web.
And one that now seemed sure to hold him fast.
To hold him fast indeed.”

Source: Masters of the Maze (1965), Chapter 7 (p. 100)

“It was but that, seeing him and so imagining that something about him was otherwise, automatically they feared him.”

Vergil in Averno (1987)

“He who has slain one, will he abstain from slaying many?”

Vergil in Averno (1987)

“These precautions, perhaps because they had been taken, proved unnecessary.”

Source: Masters of the Maze (1965), Chapter 5 (p. 68)

“Life continued, the wheel turned, the earth moved, and even death—that delightful biological necessity—was an aspect of life.”

Source: The Phoenix and the Mirror (1969), Chapter 11

““How is your new woman? Your new-est one, I sh’d say.”
Jack shrugged. “Good enough. They all got the same thing.”
“Yeh-es,” Jeff nodded, judiciously. “But some of ’m’s got more of it than others.””

Source: Masters of the Maze (1965), Chapter 4 (p. 57)

“Hmm…hmm. A stag hunt. To what elaborate lengths the equestrian classes go in order to draw out the simple business of butchering venison.”

Source: Masters of the Maze (1965), Chapter 1 (p. 16)

“No greed was comparable to the appeal of self-sacrifice.”

Source: The Phoenix and the Mirror (1969), Chapter 6

““Drew a knife on us,” one muttered, with the sullen rage of the bully who feels wronged when resisted.”

Source: Masters of the Maze (1965), Chapter 10 (p. 143)

“It is not in the nature of any people that it should willingly endure being ruled by another people, whether it is ruled ill or ruled well.”

Source: The Phoenix and the Mirror (1969), Chapter 5

“The beast is always doomed. It’s better to face the fact honestly and not pretty it up with a lot of lies about blowing off steam and reducing tensions and getting rid of this and that, acting out anxieties, moment of truth. Piddle. There’s an ancient word, I don’t know what language it is. Bazazz. All those arguments are a lot of bazazz. Unless you’re wiping out vermin or hunting for meat to eat, the man who kills animals does so because he likes to kill. And people who like to watch do so because they like to see things being killed.”

Source: The Phoenix and the Mirror (1969), Chapter 10

“And then in that, admittedly magnificent, abrupt moment you saw what I concede without argument was the face of rather an attractive wench, and—Zeus! you weren’t thinking, man—you were simply reacting. It wasn’t your heart, it was your codpiece that the impulse came from!”

Source: Rogue Dragon (1965), Chapter XI (p. 137)

“There may be someone here who knows less about all this than I do,” Clemens said, “but I can’t imagine who.”

Source: The Phoenix and the Mirror (1969), Chapter 12

“The instructor-Na has observed in the Na 14 tendencies toward an archaic and dangerous quality to which the ancients gave the name personal ambition.”

Source: The Phoenix and the Mirror (1969), Chapter 6

“Seven cities claimed blind Homer, dead,
Through which blind Homer, living, begged his bread.”

Source: Masters of the Maze (1965), Chapter 2 (p. 30)

“It was a distinction without a difference.”

Vergil in Averno (1987)

“Tell him you’ll pay any fine within reason. That dragon-cod can’t even read his own name unless it’s written in gold ink.”

Vergil in Averno (1987)

“I can tell you that only a fool destroys useful things merely because he doesn’t like them.”

Source: Rogue Dragon (1965), Chapter VII (p. 73)

“Rumor, I fear, is scarcely as accurate as he is rapid.”

Source: Masters of the Maze (1965), Chapter 8 (p. 108)

“Experience may be a bitter teacher, but She is a good one.”

Source: The Phoenix and the Mirror (1969), Chapter 9

“Suppose Sisyphus to have been acquitted his need of forever toiling up his hill in Hell, would he have made the last journey in joy? Or would mere fatigue have extinguished all other emotion, as a torch extinguished in a sconce?”

Source: Masters of the Maze (1965), Chapter 1 (p. 19)

“Follow me, men! I’m right behind you!”

Vergil in Averno (1987)

“Surely you’ll at least see the Temple? Respect all religions, is my motto, believe in none. Sensible principle. Still, you know, must say, after all, two thousand beautiful priestesses! All ready, willing, able—and I must say—dextrous!— to do their best to inspire male worshippers with love for their goddess, hah-hah!”

Source: Masters of the Maze (1965), Chapter 8 (p. 101)

“Sorcery works against Nature, magic works with it.”

Source: The Phoenix and the Mirror (1969), Chapter 8

“Everything meant something, still, some meanings were revealed sooner than others. And that some were seemingly never revealed in no way disproved the fact.”

Source: The Phoenix and the Mirror (1969), Chapter 11

“It’s not a matter of who runs first or who runs last. It’s merely a matter of who gets caught.”

Vergil in Averno (1987)

“Where there is no bread, there is no philosophy.”

Vergil in Averno (1987)

“It is not a very interesting night market, anyway. No wonderful things are sold there, though often one wonders, next day, how one could have bought them…”

Source: The Phoenix and the Mirror (1969), Chapter 6

Vergil in Averno (1987)

“When the records of our civilization are balanced, then—but perhaps not before—the real importance of dental science will be appreciated. Now it is merely valued at the moment of toothache.”

to do their best to inspire male worshippers with love for their goddess, hah-hah!
Source: The Phoenix and the Mirror (1969), Chapter 8