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Robert Sheckley: 228 quotes2 likes

“- "What is reality?"
- "One of the many possible illusions.”

Robert Sheckley Options

Source: Options

“Hey, what is this,” he asked.
“I guess maybe you could call it like love,” Caroline said.
“Whaddaya mean, love?” Chet asked. “Your contract expressly forbids you to fall in love during the duration of your tenth kill, and it furthermore explicitly forbids you to fall in love with your Victim.”
“Love,” Caroline said coolly, “existed a long time before contracts.”

Robert Sheckley

“Contracts,” Martin said viciously, “are a lot more enforceable than love.”
Source: The 10th Victim (1965), Chapter 16 (pp. 136-137)

“Sanity is a matter of consensus.”

Robert Sheckley Options

Source: Options

“The deed of dying transcends class and breeding. It is every man’s patent of nobility, his summons from the king, his knightly adventure, the greatest deed of his life. And how he acquits himself in that lonely and perilous enterprise is his true measure as a man.”

Robert Sheckley book Immortality, Inc.

Source: Immortality, Inc. (1959), Chapter 15 (p. 71)

““The acceptance of indeterminacy is the beginning of wisdom,” the hermit quoted.”

Robert Sheckley book Mindswap

Source: Mindswap (1966), Chapter 14 (p. 70)

“He shared the common human hallmark: he was simultaneously predictable and unfathomable—a routine miracle.”

Robert Sheckley book Dimension of Miracles

Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 1 (p. 14)

“What had he been taught? For the social good, you must be your own policeman and witness. You must assume responsibility for any crime which might conceivably be yours.
The face of the informer stared impassively at him. It was Barrent’s own face, reflected back from a mirror on the wall.”

Robert Sheckley book The Status Civilization

Source: The Status Civilization (1960), Chapter 29 (p. 123)

“For Polletti, experience had brought only the bitter residue of pleasure which is the true essence of disenchantment. Certain delights which in his youth had seemed unique and unobtainable had turned out, upon acquisition, to be infinitely and drearily repeatable.”

Robert Sheckley

Source: The 10th Victim (1965), Chapter 15 (p. 130)

“She was an extremely attractive woman if you like the type, which could best be described as homicidal schizophrenic paranoiac with kittenish overtones.”

Robert Sheckley

Source: The 10th Victim (1965), Chapter 5 (p. 45)

“You have been bitten by the travel bug, which is very suitable for your time of life, and is a passion akin to falling in love, or fighting an idealistic war, or becoming disillusioned with the world, and other postures of the young.”

Robert Sheckley book Mindswap

Source: Mindswap (1966), Chapter 3 (p. 16)

“It was as easy as falling off a precipice.”

Robert Sheckley

Source: The 10th Victim (1965), Chapter 3 (p. 28)

“And yet, Blaine thought, mankind showed an historic ability to avoid the extremes of doom as well as the extremes of bliss. Chaos was forever prophesized and utopia was continually predicted, and neither came to pass.”

Robert Sheckley book Immortality, Inc.

Source: Immortality, Inc. (1959), Chapter 3 (p. 9)

“I’ll follow the reedy tenor of his excuses and blast them with the bellowy bass of irrefutable logic!”

Robert Sheckley book Dimension of Miracles

Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 4 (p. 33)

“Your predator is close behind you and will infallibly be your death.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Carmody said, in a moment of strange calm.” But in terms of long-range planning, I never did expect to get out of this Universe alive.”
“That is meaningless,” the Prize said. “The fact is, you have lost everything.”
“I don’t agree,” Carmody said. “Permit me to point out that I am presently still alive.”
“Agreed. But only for the moment.”
“I have always been alive only for the moment,” Carmody said. “I could never count on more. It was my error to expect more. That holds true, I believe, for all of my possible and potential circumstances.”
“Then what do you hope to achieve with your moment?”
“Nothing,” Carmody said. “Everything.”
“I don’t understand you any longer,” the Prize said. “Something about you has changed, Carmody. What is it?”
“A minor thing,” Carmody told him. “I have simply given up a longevity which I never possessed anyhow. I have turned away from the con game which the Gods run in their heavenly sideshow. I no longer care under which shell the pea of immortality might be found. I don’t need it. I have my moment, which is quite enough.”
“Saint Carmody,” the Prize said, in tones of deepest sarcasm. “No more than a shadow’s breadth separates you and death! What will you do now with your pitiable moment?”

Robert Sheckley book Dimension of Miracles

“I shall continue to live it,” Carmody said. “That is what moments are for.”
Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 28 (pp. 189-190; closing words)

“Carmody’s jaw stiffened and he withdrew his hand. He had been pushed around long enough. Now, for the sake of his own self-esteem, he would not yield any more.”

Robert Sheckley book Dimension of Miracles

Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 4 (p. 31)

““Machines!” the Clerk said scornfully. “We have many of them, some exquisitely complex. But event the best of them are much like idiot savants. They do adequately on tedious straightforward tasks like building stars or destroying planets. But give them something tough, like solacing a widow, and they simply go to pieces. Would you believe it, the largest computer in our section can landscape an entire planet; but it cannot fry an egg or carry a tune, and it knows less about ethics than a newborn wolf cub. Would you want something like that to run your life?”
“Of course not,” Carmody said. “But couldn’t someone build a machine with creativity and judgment?”
“Someone has,” the Clerk said. “It has been designed to learn from experience, which means that it must make errors in order to arrive at truths. It comes in many shapes and sizes, most of them quite portable. Its flaws are readily apparent, but seem to exist as necessary counterweights to it virtues. No one has yet improved on the basic design, though many have tried. This ingenious device is called ‘intelligent life.’””

Robert Sheckley book Dimension of Miracles

Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 3 (pp. 25-26)

“Our roles are chose for us in this world by the stern dictates of an unrelenting Fate; and many a man who thought to play the emperor on Life’s stage found himself cast for a corpse instead.”

Robert Sheckley book Mindswap

Source: Mindswap (1966), Chapter 26 (p. 124)

“Once upon a time men resisted the implications of actuality. That day is gone. We know now that art is the thing itself together with its extensions into superfluity. Not pop art, I hasten to say, which sneers and exaggerates. This is popular art, which simply exists. This is the age in which we unconditionally accept the unacceptable, and thus proclaim the naturalness of our artificiality.”

Robert Sheckley book Dimension of Miracles

Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 28 (p. 187)

“Remember, similitude need not imply exactitude.”

Robert Sheckley book Dimension of Miracles

Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 24 (p. 159)