Fritz Leiber Quotes (67 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

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Swords Against Death

Fritz Leiber

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Famous Fritz Leiber Quotes

“You have been told that the Great God rules the universe—earth and sky. I tell you the Great God is fake!”

Fritz Leiber book Gather, Darkness!

Source: Gather, Darkness! (1950), Chapter 1 (p. 8)

“The result is… that there's no room left in the world for the weird – though plenty for crude, contemptuous, wisecracking, fun-poking imitations of it.”

Fritz Leiber Heroes and Horrors

Source: Heroes and Horrors

“There are vampires and vampires, and the ones that suck blood aren’t the worst.”

Fritz Leiber

Short Fiction, Night's Black Agents (1947)
Source: “The Girl with the Hungry Eyes” (p. 240)

“Sometimes I wonder if our memories are as good as we think they are and if the whole past wasn’t once entirely different from anything we remember, and we’ve forgotten that we forgot.”

Fritz Leiber book The Big Time

The Big Time (1958)

“Armon Jarles, there is only the cosmos and the electronic entities that constitute it, without soul or purpose, save so far as neuronic minds impose purpose upon it.
“Armon Jarles, the Hierarchy embodies the highest form of such purpose.
“Armon Jarles, the supernatural and the idealized have one trait in common. They are not. There is only reality.”

Fritz Leiber book Gather, Darkness!

Source: Gather, Darkness! (1950), Chapter 10 (p. 105)

“The idea of brutality actually shocks him, thought Goniface amusedly. I wonder what name he has for the toil we exact of the commoners, and the penances we impose on them?”

Fritz Leiber book Gather, Darkness!

Source: Gather, Darkness! (1950), Chapter 13 (p. 126)

Fritz Leiber Quotes about life

“What was life worth, anyway, if you had to sit around remembering not to mention this, that, and the other thing because someone else might be upset?”

Fritz Leiber book Conjure Wife

Source: Conjure Wife (1953), Chapter 11 (p. 116).

“Life’s always been a business of working hard and fighting the cold,” Pa was saying. “The earth’s always been a lonely place, millions of miles from the next planet. And no matter how long the human race might have lived, the end would have come some night. Those things don’t matter. What matters is that life is good. It has a lovely texture, like some thick fur or the petals of flowers—you’ve never seen those, but you know our ice-flowers—or like the texture of flames, never twice the same. It makes everything else worth while. And that’s as true for the last man as for the first.”

Fritz Leiber

“A Pail of Air” (p. 20); originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction, December 1951
Short Fiction, A Pail of Air (1964)

“Now as for thinking your account a tale or story, my dear Franz, to be a good story is to me the highest the highest test of the truth of anything. I make no distinction whatever between reality and fantasy, or the objective and the subjective. All life and all awareness are ultimately one, including intensest pain and death itself. Not all the play need please us, and ends are never comforting. Some things fit together harmoniously and beautifully and startlingly with thrilling discords—those are true—and some do not, and those are merely bad art.”

Fritz Leiber book Our Lady of Darkness

Source: Our Lady of Darkness (1977), Chapter 17 (p. 95)

“What was the whole literature of supernatural horror but an essay to make death itself exciting?—wonder and strangeness to life’s very end.”

Fritz Leiber book Our Lady of Darkness

Source: Our Lady of Darkness (1977), Chapter 27 (p. 166)

“I’ve never found anything in occult literature that seemed to have a bearing. You know, the occult—very much like stories of supernatural horror—is a sort of game. Most religions, too. Believe in the game and accept its rules—or the premises of the story—and you can have the thrills or whatever it is you’re after. Accept the spirit world and you can see ghosts and talk to the dear departed. Accept Heaven and you can have the hope of eternal life and the reassurance of an all-powerful god working on your side. Accept Hell and you can have devils and demons, if that’s what you want. Accept—if only for story purposes—witchcraft, druidism, shamanism, magic or some modern variant and you can have werewolves, vampires, elementals. Or believe in the influence and power of a grave, an ancient house or monument, a dead religion, or an old stone with an inscription on it—and you can have inner things of the same general sort. But I’m thinking of the kind of horror—and wonder too, perhaps—that lies beyond any game, that’s bigger than any game, that’s fettered by no rules, conforms to no man-made theology, bows to no charms or protective rituals, that strides the world unseen and strikes without warning where it will, much the same as (though it’s of a different order of existence than all of these) lightning or the plague or the enemy atom bomb. The sort of horror that the whole fabric of civilization was designed to protect us from and make us forget. The horror about which all man’s learning tells us nothing.”

Fritz Leiber

“A Bit of the Dark World” (pp. 261-262); originally published in Fantastic, February 1962
Short Fiction, Night's Black Agents (1947)

“I realized that wherever she came from, whatever shaped her, she’s the quintessence of the horror behind the bright billboard. She’s the smile that tricks you into throwing away your money and your life. She’s the eyes that lead you on and on, and then show you death. She’s the creature you give everything for and never really get. She’s the being that takes everything you’ve got and gives nothing in return. When you yearn towards her face on the billboards, remember that. She’s the lure. She’s the bait. She’s the Girl.”

Fritz Leiber

“The Girl with the Hungry Eyes” (p. 241)
Short Fiction, Night's Black Agents (1947)

Fritz Leiber Quotes about thinking

“Goniface was thinking how like his own was the destiny of the whole Hierarchy and of every priest in it. Whether they murdered their families—and their own youth—actually or only in spirit, it amounted to the same thing. They betrayed and deserted them, left them for dead, to enjoy the power and pleasures of a sterile tyrant class.”

Fritz Leiber book Gather, Darkness!

Source: Gather, Darkness! (1950), Chapter 19 (p. 207)

“But now the priests think only one thing. How to hold on to their power as long as mankind lasts—until the sun darkens and the earth freezes!”

Fritz Leiber book Gather, Darkness!

Source: Gather, Darkness! (1950), Chapter 1 (p. 15)

“I think all modern cities, especially the crass, newly built, highly industrial ones, should have ghosts. They are a civilizing influence.”

Fritz Leiber book Our Lady of Darkness

Source: Our Lady of Darkness (1977), Chapter 18 (p. 98)

“Poets are wiser than anyone because they’re the only people who have the guts to think and feel at the same time.”

Fritz Leiber book The Big Time

The Big Time (1958)

“You know, all insanity is a form of artistic expression, I often think. Only the person has nothing but himself to work with—he can’t get at outside materials to manipulate them—so he puts all his art into his behavior.”

Fritz Leiber book Our Lady of Darkness

Source: Our Lady of Darkness (1977), Chapter 10 (p. 56)

Fritz Leiber: Trending quotes

“What is superstition, but misguided, unobjective science?”

Fritz Leiber book Conjure Wife

Source: Conjure Wife (1953), Chapter 2 (p. 26).
Context: What is superstition, but misguided, unobjective science? And when it comes down to that, is it to be wondered if people grasp at superstition in this rotten, hate-filled, half-doomed world of today? Lord knows, I'd welcome the blackest of black magic, if it could do anything to stave off the atom bomb.

Science

“They’ve heard about space but they still don’t believe in it.”

Fritz Leiber book The Wanderer

Source: The Wanderer (1964), Chapter 6 (p. 37).
Context: They’ve heard about space but they still don’t believe in it. They haven’t been out here to see for themselves that there isn’t any giant elephant under the earth, holding it up, and a giant tortoise holding up the elephant. If I say “planet” and “spaceship” to them, they still think “horoscope” and “flying saucer”.

“He had the illusion, he said, of getting perilously close to the innermost secrets of the universe and finding they were rotten and evil and sardonic.”

Fritz Leiber

“The Dreams of Albert Moreland” (p. 182); originally published in The Acolyte, #10, Spring 1945
Short Fiction, Night's Black Agents (1947)

Secret , Universe , Evil

Fritz Leiber Quotes

“It was always worth everything to get away by himself, climb a bit, and study the heavens.”

Fritz Leiber book The Wanderer

Source: The Wanderer (1964), Chapter 3 (p. 26).

Study

“In the wake of a Big Change, cultures and individuals are transposed, it’s true, yet in the main they continue much as they were, except for the usual scattering of unfortunate but statistically meaningless accidents.”

Fritz Leiber book The Big Time

The Big Time (1958)

Change

“The Devourers want not only the patronage of all beings in all universes, but — doubtless because they are afraid someone will some day raise the ever-unpleasant question of the true worth of things — they want all their customers reduced to a state of slavish and submissive suggestibility, so that they are fit for nothing whatever but to gawk at and buy the trash the Devourers offer for sale.”

Fritz Leiber

Source: Bazaar of the Bizarre (pp. 233-234) note: Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series (1939-1988), Swords Against Death (1970)

Question , Universe

“You’ve got to believe there’s some sort of sense in everything that crazies say.”
“Crazies?”

Fritz Leiber book Our Lady of Darkness

“All of us.”
Source: Our Lady of Darkness (1977), Chapter 30 (p. 181)

Sense

“I am up to date only sporadically. I live firmly in the world of art, where reality and fantasy are one.”

Fritz Leiber book Our Lady of Darkness

Source: Our Lady of Darkness (1977), Chapter 16 (p. 89)

World , Art , Reality

“I abominate any organization that denies cats are people!”

Fritz Leiber book The Wanderer

Source: The Wanderer (1964), Chapter 3.

People , Cats

“There was always something new to be seen in the unchanging night sky.”

Fritz Leiber book The Wanderer

Source: The Wanderer (1964), Chapter 5 (p. 33).

Night

“What do you care? You always liked loneliness better than you liked people. No offence — liking yourself’s the beginning of all love.”

Fritz Leiber book The Wanderer

Source: The Wanderer (1964), Chapter 42 (p. 340).

Love , People , Loneliness

“Paul stared out at the randomly scattered, lonely stars and wondered why he had always so easily accepted that they represented order.”

Fritz Leiber book The Wanderer

Source: The Wanderer (1964), Chapter 34 (p. 270).

Star

“Of course, if you assume a big enough conspiracy, you can explain anything, including the cosmos itself.”

Fritz Leiber book The Big Time

The Big Time (1958)

“The greater the variety of intelligent life Don saw, the more he became sensitive to its presence.”

Fritz Leiber book The Wanderer

Source: The Wanderer (1964), Chapter 33 (p. 259).

Life , Intelligence

“Science has only increased the area of the unknown. And if there is a God, her name is Mystery.”

Fritz Leiber book Our Lady of Darkness

Source: Our Lady of Darkness (1977), Chapter 8 (p. 43)

God , Science

“I know only too well from a personal experience that is number one on my list of things to be forgotten.”

Fritz Leiber book The Big Time

The Big Time (1958)

Personality

“It’s this mucking inefficiency and death of the cosmos — and don’t tell me that isn’t in the cards! — masquerading as benign omniscient authority.”

Fritz Leiber book The Big Time

The Big Time (1958)

Death

““Dreams mean nothing,” he said coldly. “They are unreal.”
“They’re as real as anything else,” she shot back at him. “And they merely mean conscience.””

Fritz Leiber book Gather, Darkness!

Source: Gather, Darkness! (1950), Chapter 14 (p. 145)

Dreams

“Work and pray,
Live on hay.
You’ll get pie
In the sky
When you die—
It’s a lie!”

Fritz Leiber

“Bread Overhead” (p. 121); originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction, February 1958; alluding to the song The Preacher and the Slave.
Short Fiction, A Pail of Air (1964)

Lie

“There was an omnipresent sense of crisis.”

Fritz Leiber book The Wanderer

Source: The Wanderer (1964), Chapter 33 (p. 259).

Sense

“What have I always told you about Soldiers? The bigger the gripe, the smaller the cause! It is infallible!”

Fritz Leiber book The Big Time

The Big Time (1958)

“You are not the first to be shocked and horrified by chess,” he assured her. “It is a curse of the intellect. It is a game for lunatics—or else it creates them.”

Fritz Leiber

“The 64-Square Madhouse” (p. 74); originally published in If, May 1962
Short Fiction, A Pail of Air (1964)

Game

“I’ll have to learn to snowshoe. I had my first lesson this morning and cut a ludicrous figure. I’ll be virtually a prisoner until I learn my way around. But any price is worth paying to get away from the thought-destroying din and soul-killing routine of the city!”

Fritz Leiber

“Diary in the Snow” (p. 203); originally published in the first edition of Night's Black Agents (1947)
Short Fiction, Night's Black Agents (1947)

Way , Soul , Learning

“There is an inescapable imperative about certain industrial developments. If there is not a safe road of advance, then a dangerous one will invariably be taken.”

Fritz Leiber

Short Fiction, Catch that Zeppelin! (1975)

“Then time seemed to stop, or rather to lose its directional urgency of movement; it became a place in the open where one stood rather than a low, narrow corridor down which one was hurried.”

Fritz Leiber book The Wanderer

Source: The Wanderer (1964), Chapter 40 (p. 312).

Time

“What is idealism? It is distortion. A giving of false values to things which in reality do not possess those values. Personalities differ chiefly in their pattern of values. When the values are largely false, the personality is unstable.”

Fritz Leiber book Gather, Darkness!

Source: Gather, Darkness! (1950), Chapter 10 (p. 106)

Reality , Personality , Falseness

“The Devourers are the most accomplished merchants in all the many universes — so accomplished, indeed, that they sell only trash. There is a deep necessity in this, for the Devourers must occupy all their cunning in perfecting their methods of selling and so have not an instant to spare in considering the worth of what they sell.”

Fritz Leiber

Short Fiction, Bazaar of the Bizarre (1963)

Universe , Perfection

“After all, to the truly skeptical mind, diabolic forces are just as reasonable building blocks for the cosmos as mindless electrons. No possibility, however seemingly fantastic, should revolt the truly skeptical mind. It all depends on the evidence. The evidence decides everything.”

Fritz Leiber book Gather, Darkness!

Source: Gather, Darkness! (1950), Chapter 19 (p. 195)

Dependency

“Devils may be nothing but beings intent on their purpose, which now happens to collide with yours.”

Fritz Leiber book The Wanderer

Source: The Wanderer (1964), Chapter 16 (p. 113).

“I suppose that every blundering idealist who hasn’t been brought face to face with the hard facts of life carries, at the back of his mind, a sneaking suspicion that villainy is a very dashing and romantic thing. When your mind turned turtle, or when they turned it for you, your new personality was necessarily fabricated out of all your fragmentary romantic notions of villainy—unlimited ambition and conceit, absolute lack of emotion, and all the rest of the supervillain ideology!”

Fritz Leiber book Gather, Darkness!

Source: Gather, Darkness! (1950), Chapter 14 (p. 144)

Life , Personality

“To understand why George fell for this story, one must remember his stifled romanticism, his sense of personal failure, his deep need to believe. The thing came to him like, or rather instead of, a religious conversion.”

Fritz Leiber

“Time Fighter” (p. 67); originally published in Fantastic Universe, March 1957
Short Fiction, A Pail of Air (1964)

Failure , Understanding , Sense , Personality

“A scientist ought to have a healthy disregard for coincidences.”

Fritz Leiber book Conjure Wife

Source: Conjure Wife (1953), Chapter 3 (p. 39).

“Everyone knows Newton as the great scientist. Few remember that he spent half his life muddling with alchemy, looking for the philosopher's stone. That was the pebble by the seashore he really wanted to find.”

Fritz Leiber book Poor Superman

Originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction, July 1951, under the title "Appointment in Tomorrow".
Short Fiction, Poor Superman (1951)

Life

“Besides, what difference did if make if there had been two genuine coincidences? The universe was full of them. Every molecular collision was a coincidence. You could pile a thousand coincidences on top of another, he averred, and not get Tom Digby one step nearer to believing in the supernatural. Oh, he knew intelligent people enough, all right, who coddled such beliefs. Some of his best friends liked to relate “yarns” and toy with eerie possibilities for the sake of a thrill. But the only emotion Tom ever got out of such stuff was a nauseating disgust. It cut too deep for joking. It was a reversion to that primitive, fear-bound ignorance from which science had slowly lifted man, inch by inch, against the most bitter opposition.”

Fritz Leiber

“The Hill and the Hole” (p. 165); originally published in Unknown Worlds, August 1942
Short Fiction, Night's Black Agents (1947)

People , Fear , Intelligence , Universe

“For that matter, where did I get off being critical of anyone?”

Fritz Leiber book The Big Time

The Big Time (1958)

“Thoughts are dangerous, he told himself, and thoughts against all science, all sanity, all civilized intelligence, are the most dangerous of all.”

Fritz Leiber book Conjure Wife

Source: Conjure Wife (1953), Chapter 10 (p. 106).

Intelligence , Science

“Now is a bearable burden. What buckles the back is the added weight of the past’s mistakes and the future’s fears.”

Fritz Leiber book The Big Time

The Big Time (1958)

Fear , Past , Future

“It was funny, though, how the human mind would cast doubt even on itself in order to explain away unusual and unconventional things it had seen vividly and unmistakably. It left you in the middle, the human mind did.”

Fritz Leiber book Our Lady of Darkness

Source: Our Lady of Darkness (1977), Chapter 15 (p. 83)

“Things are different from what I thought. They’re much worse.”

Fritz Leiber book Conjure Wife

Source: Conjure Wife (1953), Chapter 20 (p. 209).

“He knew that ahead lay many perils—threats to his bodily welfare. And recently Jarles had come to have a great respect for that bag of flesh and bones which contained his ego.”

Fritz Leiber book Gather, Darkness!

Source: Gather, Darkness! (1950), Chapter 12 (p. 117)

“The gods spend the wealth the universe gathers, they scan the wonders and fling them to nothingness. That’s why they’re the gods! I told you they were devils.”

Fritz Leiber book The Wanderer

Source: The Wanderer (1964), Chapter 42 (pp. 336-337).

God , Universe , Wealth

“Beside me, traffic growled and snarled, rising at times to a machine-gun rata-tat-tat, while pedestrians were scuttling about with that desperate ratlike urgency characteristic of all big American cities, but which reaches its ultimate in New York.”

Fritz Leiber

Short Fiction, Catch that Zeppelin! (1975)

Time

“The Devourers want to brood about their great service to the many universes — it is their claim that servile customers make the most obedient subjects for the gods.”

Fritz Leiber

Short Fiction, Bazaar of the Bizarre (1963)
Source: Bazaar of the Bizarre (p. 234) note: Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series (1939-1988), Swords Against Death (1970)

Universe , God

“I thought of how people are like planets—lonely little forts of mind with immense black distance barring them off from each other.”

Fritz Leiber

“A Bit of the Dark World” (p. 263)
Short Fiction, Night's Black Agents (1947)

People

““Conscience is only social pressure,” he told her, tense without quite knowing why, “the impulse to submerge your ego in that of the herd, and do what other people want you to because you’re afraid of their censure. Realistic self-interest frees a person from the childish restrictions of conscience.”
“Are you sure of that, Jarles? What about your dreams? Conscience may be partly what you say it is, but it’s more than that. It’s hearkening to the wisest thoughts that have occurred to the minds of the human race.””

Fritz Leiber book Gather, Darkness!

Source: Gather, Darkness! (1950), Chapter 14 (pp. 145-146)

People , Dreams , Personality

“No matter how hard and wearisome an age this might be, it was certainly a very exciting one with regard to manifestations of the supernatural.”

Fritz Leiber book Gather, Darkness!

Source: Gather, Darkness! (1950), Chapter 5 (p. 54)