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Jack Vance Quotes
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John Holbrook "Jack" Vance was an American mystery, fantasy, and science fiction writer. Though most of his work has been published under the name Jack Vance, he also wrote 9 mystery novels using his full name John Holbrook Vance, three under the pseudonym Ellery Queen, and one each using the pseudonyms Alan Wade, Peter Held, John van See, and Jay Kavanse. Some editions of his published works give his year of birth as 1920.

Vance won the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 1984 and he was a Guest of Honor at the 1992 World Science Fiction Convention in Orlando, Florida. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America made him its 14th Grand Master in 1997 and the Science Fiction Hall of Fame inducted him in 2001, its sixth class of two deceased and two living writers.

Among his awards for particular works were: Hugo Awards, in 1963 for The Dragon Masters, in 1967 for The Last Castle, and in 2010 for his memoir This is Me, Jack Vance!; a Nebula Award in 1966, also for The Last Castle; the Jupiter Award in 1975; the World Fantasy Award in 1990 for Lyonesse: Madouc. He also won an Edgar for the best first mystery novel in 1961 for The Man in the Cage.

A 2009 profile in The New York Times Magazine described Vance as "one of American literature's most distinctive and undervalued voices". He died at his home in Oakland, California on May 26, 2013, aged 96.

✵ 28. August 1916 – 26. May 2013   •   Other names جک ونس, ჯეკ ვენსი
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Jack Vance: 213   quotes 3   likes

Jack Vance Quotes

“The crime,” said the Jacynth softly, “is abstract and fundamental: the innate depravity of extinguishing life.”

Jack Vance book To Live Forever

Source: To Live Forever (1956), Chapter XI, section 2

Life

“Navigation on this lake is forbidden to aliens,” he declared. “We are ordered to sink all intruding vessels. Prepare to drown.”

Jack Vance book Showboat World

Source: Showboat World (1975), Chapter 14 (p. 162)

““We are supposed to set you a good example,” said Devonet. “As a start, I will point out that a lady of refinement would not wish to be found so high in a tree.”
“Then I am a lady of refinement well and truly,” said Madouc, “since I did not wish to be found.””

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), Madouc (1989), Chapter 3, section 1 (p. 718)

Tree

“Ah! Five hundred years I have toiled to entice this creature, despairing, doubting, brooding by night, yet never abandoning hope that my calculations were accurate and my great talisman cogent. Then, when finally it appears, you fall upon it for no other reason than to sate your repulsive gluttony!”

Jack Vance Dying Earth

Source: Dying Earth (1950-1984), The Eyes of the Overworld (1966), Chapter 4, "The Sorcerer Pharesm"

Hope , Appearance , Despair , Night

““It sees that you are wrong, that you are guided by faith indeed.”
The Demie fell silent. His face seemed to stiffen.
“Are these not facts?” asked Joaz. “How do you reconcile them with your faith?
The Demie said mildly, “Facts can never be reconciled with faith.””

Jack Vance book The Dragon Masters

Section 7
The Dragon Masters (1962)

Faith

“The merchant voiced an inarticulate protest. Glystra glared at him, “Do you think I trust you?”
“Trust?” said the merchant with a puzzled expression. “Trust? What word is that?” And he tested it several times more.”

Jack Vance book Big Planet

Source: Big Planet (1957), Chapter 16 “The Search” (p. 167)

Thinking , Time

“Speaking our language, you will understand us—and if you can think as another man thinks, you cannot dislike him.”

Jack Vance book The Languages of Pao

Source: The Languages of Pao (1958), Chapter 8 (p. 64)

Understanding , Thinking

“I suspect that the word (art) was invented by second-rate intelligences to describe the incomprehensible activities of their betters.”

Jack Vance book Showboat World

Source: Showboat World (1975), Chapter 10 (p. 111)

Art , Intelligence

“The town’s lack of special quirks was almost a peculiarity in itself.”

Jack Vance book Showboat World

Source: Showboat World (1975), Chapter 3 (p. 23)

“The void is a mouth crying to be filled, a blank mind aching for thought, a cavity desperate for shape. What is not implies what is.”

Jack Vance book To Live Forever

Source: To Live Forever (1956), Chapter XI, section 1

Cry

“You have frightened and daunted me. I will stop stealing at once.”

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), The Green Pearl (1985), Chapter 3, section 2 (p. 394)

“Consider the human mind! It is capable of amazing feats when used properly. Conversely, without exercise it atrophies to a lump of gray-yellow fat.”

Jack Vance book Showboat World

Source: Showboat World (1975), Chapter 7 (p. 83)

Exercises

“And, stretching in languid warmth, she contrived to twist her body into first one luxurious position, then another.”

Jack Vance Dying Earth

Source: Dying Earth (1950-1984), The Eyes of the Overworld (1966), Chapter 2, "Cil"

“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 book Emphyrio

Source: Emphyrio (1969), Chapter 9

Exercises , Freedom

“Here you see the pattern from which my great work is derived. It expresses the symbolic significance of NULLITY to which TOTALITY must necessarily attach itself, by Kratinjae's Second Law of Cryptorrhoid Affinities, with which you are possibly familiar.”

Jack Vance Dying Earth

"Not in every aspect," said Cugel.
Source: Dying Earth (1950-1984), The Eyes of the Overworld (1966), Chapter 4, "The Sorcerer Pharesm"

Law

“Humanity is old, civilization is new: the mesh of cogs is by no means smooth—and this is as it should be. Never should a man enter a building of glass or metal, or a spaceship, or a submarine, without a small shock of astonishment; never should he avoid an act of passion without a small sense of effort…. We of the Institute receive an intensive historical inculcation; we know the men of the past, and we have projected dozens of possible future variations, which, without exception, are repulsive. Man, as he exists now, with all his faults and vices, a thousand gloriously irrational compromises between two thousand sterile absolute—is optimal. Or so it seems to us who are men.”

Jack Vance Demon Princes

Source: Demon Princes (1964-1981), The Killing Machine (1964), Chapter 3 (p. 179)

Men , Optimism , Sense , Effort

“And I understand they are, in a sense, artists? That is to say, they understand the creative process, the sublimation of fact to symbol and the use of symbol to suggest emotion?”

Jack Vance book Space Opera

Source: Space Opera (1965), Chapter 8 (p. 65)

Understanding , Sense

“"Llorio, you are a woman of surpassing beauty, though you would seem to lack that provocative warmth which draws man to woman, and adds dimension to the character."
The Murthe responded curtly: "The quality you describe is a kind of lewd obsequiousness which, happily, has now become obsolete. As for the 'surpassing beauty,' it is an apotheotic quality generated by the surging music of the female soul, which you, in your crassness, perceive only as a set of pleasing contours."”

Jack Vance Dying Earth

"The Murthe", chapter 3
Dying Earth (1950-1984), Rhialto the Marvellous (1984)

Beauty , Music , Soul , Drawing

“He must approach the subject critically, alert for contradictions, pedantry and vagueness.”

Jack Vance book To Live Forever

Source: To Live Forever (1956), Chapter V, section 2

“I challenge Destiny, yes, but I do not leap off cliffs.”

Jack Vance Dying Earth

Source: Dying Earth (1950-1984), Cugel's Saga (1983), Chapter 1, section 2, "The Inn of Blue Lamps"

“His brain ached with the want of knowing.”

Jack Vance Dying Earth

Source: Dying Earth (1950-1984), The Dying Earth (1950), Chapter 6, "Guyal of Sfere"

“I have transcended that phase in my intellectual growth where I discover humour in simple freakishness. What exists is real; therefore it is tragic, since wherever lives must die. Only fantasy, the vapours rising from sheer nonsense, can now excite my laughter.”

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), The Green Pearl (1985), Chapter 5, section 3 (p. 430)

Laughter

“A single question remained, the age-old cry of anguish: “How could one so beautiful be so base?””

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), The Green Pearl (1985), Chapter 6, section 1 (p. 434)

Age , Beauty , Question , Cry

“Aillas groaned. “Destiny could never be so unkind.”
Suldrun said in a soft voice: “Destiny doesn’t really care.””

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), Suldrun's Garden (1983), Chapter 11, section 1 (p. 103)

“My clever baton holds your unnatural sorcery in abeyance.”

Jack Vance

Source: Quotations and text from the Dying Earth novels, The Dying Earth (1950), Chapter 6, "Guyal of Sfere"

“If ambush I must, then ambush I will,” Aillas muttered to himself. “A fig for chivalry, at least until the war is won.”

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), The Green Pearl (1985), Chapter 10, section 3 (p. 518)

War

“Claghorn had long insisted that no human condition endured forever, with the corollary that the more complicated such a condition, the greater its susceptibility to change.”

Jack Vance book The Last Castle

Source: The Last Castle (1966), Chapter 2, section 1

Change

“Yes, I realize that I see but a semblance, but so do you, and who is to say which is real?”

Jack Vance Dying Earth

Source: Dying Earth (1950-1984), The Eyes of the Overworld (1966), Chapter 1, "The Overworld"

“What, given the circumstances, would have been Emphyrio’s course of action?
Truth.
Very well, thought Ghyl: it shall be Truth, and let the consequences fall where they may.”

Jack Vance book Emphyrio

Source: Emphyrio (1969), Chapter 22

Truth

“He used a name for himself, true, but we played at Romance, and this is a game where truth is a bagatelle.”

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), Madouc (1989), Chapter 8, section 5 (p. 904)

Truth , Game

“An inch of foreknowledge is worth ten miles of after-thought.”

Jack Vance Dying Earth

Source: Dying Earth (1950-1984), Cugel's Saga (1983), Chapter 5, section 2, "The Bagful of Dreams"

“I suppose if you isolate yourself to such an extent, you more or less must expect a series of emergencies.”

Jack Vance

Source: Short fiction, Rumfuddle (1973), Section 2 (p. 168)

“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 Dying Earth

Source: Dying Earth (1950-1984), The Eyes of the Overworld (1966), Chapter 2, "Cil"

Death , Affliction , Personality

“It is simple dog-eat-dog,” said Waylock. It’s basic battle for survival, fiercer and more brutal than ever before in the history of man. You have blinded yourself; you subscribe to false theories; you are permeated with your obsession—not only you but all of us. If we faced the facts of existence, our palliatories would be less crowded.”

Jack Vance book To Live Forever

Source: To Live Forever (1956), Chapter XI, section 2

Dogs , History , Falseness

“Roger tried to find out all about her: he wanted, in one brief hour, to make up for a lifetime of non-acquaintance, a lifetime for all practical purposes wasted.”

Jack Vance book Space Opera

Source: Space Opera (1965), Chapter 4 (p. 30)

““Is this the conduct of a ‘sly and unpredictable villain’?”
“Decidedly so, if the villain, for the purposes of his joke, thinks to simulate the altruist.”
“Then how will you know villain from altruist?”
Cugel shrugged. “It is not an important distinction.””

Jack Vance Dying Earth

Source: Dying Earth (1950-1984), Cugel's Saga (1983), Chapter 3, section 2, "Faucelme"

Thinking

“I still feel that we should act with restraint. It’s much easier not to do than to undo.”

Jack Vance

Section 12 (p. 218)
Short fiction, Rumfuddle (1973)

Feeling

“They call me a renegade.
The epithet is inaccurate and undeserved. I cannot be faithless to a cause which I never have endorsed. Indeed, I am absolutely faithful to the only cause I espouse, which is my own welfare. I take pride in this unswerving loyalty!”

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), The Green Pearl (1985), Chapter 4, section 3 (p. 418)

Faith , Loyalty

“The colour, noise and festivity failed to elevate Carfilhiot’s mood; in fact—so he told himself—never had he witnessed so much pointless nonsense.”

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), Suldrun's Garden (1983), Chapter 25, section 3 (p. 280)

Mood

“There can be no doubt as to the facts as I have stated them. Orthodoxy derives from this axiomatic foundation, and the two systems are mutually reinforcing: hence each is doubly validated.”

Jack Vance Dying Earth

Source: Dying Earth (1950-1984), The Eyes of the Overworld (1966), Chapter 4, "The Sorcerer Pharesm"

“King Aillas talks softly and with great politeness; he has the uncomfortable skill of calling one a false-hearted blackguard, a liar, a cheat and a villain, but making it seem a fulsome compliment.”

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), Madouc (1989), Chapter 6, section 5 (p. 807)

Heart , Cheating , Falseness

“The folk are peculiar in many ways," said Erwig. "They preen themselves upon the gentility of their habits, yet they refuse to whitewash their hair, and they are slack in their religious observances. For instance, they make obeisance to Divine Wiulio with the right hand, not on the buttock, but on the abdomen, which we here consider a slipshod practice. What are your own views?"
"The rite should be conducted as you describe," said Cugel. "No other method carries weight.”

Jack Vance Dying Earth

Erwig refilled Cugel's glass. "I consider this an important endorsement of our views!"
Source: Dying Earth (1950-1984), Cugel's Saga (1983), Chapter 5, section 2, "The Bagful of Dreams"

Way

“"A natural scientist, examining a single atom, might well be able to asseverate the structure and history of the entire universe!"
Bah!" muttered Hurtiancz. "By the same token, a sensible man need listen to but a single word in order to recognize the whole for egregious nonsense."”

Jack Vance Dying Earth

Dying Earth (1950-1984), Rhialto the Marvellous (1984), "Morreion", Ch. 8

History , Nature , Universe

““I am more inclined to punish Hurtiancz for his crassness,” said Ildefonse. “But now he simulates a swinish stupidity to escape my anger.”“Absolute falsity!” roared Hurtiancz. “I simulate nothing!”Ildefonse shrugged. “For all his deficiencies as polemicist and magician, Hurtiancz at least is candid.””

Jack Vance

"Morreion"
Quotations and text from the Dying Earth novels, Rhialto the Marvellous (1984)

Stupidity , Anger

“Who is seducing whom? If we are working to the same ends, there is no need for so many cross-purposes.”

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), Suldrun's Garden (1983), Chapter 13, section 3 (p. 136; Shimrod to Melancthe)

“I give dignity second place to expedience.”

Jack Vance Dying Earth

Source: Dying Earth (1950-1984), Cugel's Saga (1983), Chapter 6, section 1, "The Four Wizards"

““I think that I will not answer that question,” he said at last. “I would create as many false images as there were ears to hear me.”
“Half as many,” Clissum pointed out delicately.”

Jack Vance Dying Earth

Source: Dying Earth (1950-1984), Cugel's Saga (1983), Chapter 4, section 2, "The Caravan"

Question , Thinking , Falseness

“I must cite an intrinsic condition of the universe. We set forth in any direction which seems convenient; each leads to the same place: the end of the universe.”

Jack Vance Dying Earth

"Morreion", Ch. 6
Dying Earth (1950-1984), Rhialto the Marvellous (1984)

Universe

“Your doctrines are remarkable! As if I existed only to fulfill your cravings! Then, since I do not care to do so, the cosmos must be considered insane.”

Jack Vance book Showboat World

Source: Showboat World (1975), Chapter 11 (p. 123)