Fritz Leiber: Quotes about space

Fritz Leiber was American writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. Explore interesting quotes on universe.

Fritz Leiber: 134 quotes2 likes

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

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

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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).

“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)