Roger Zelazny: Trending quotes

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Roger Zelazny: 224 quotes2 likes

“Earth grates on my nerves. It gives me a big pain these days. That’s why I live out here. Earth is overcrowded, bureaucratic, unhealthy, and suffering from too many mass-psychoses to bother classifying.”

Roger Zelazny Isle of the Dead

Source: Isle of the Dead (1969), Chapter 3 (p. 61)

“A bizarrerie of fires, cunabulum of light, it moved with a deft, almost dainty deliberation, phasing into and out of existence like a storm-shot piece of evening; or perhaps the darkness between the flares was more akin to its truest nature — swirl of black ashes assembled in prancing cadence to the lowing note of desert wind down the arroyo behind buildings as empty yet filled as the pages of unread books or stillnesses between the notes of a song.”

Roger Zelazny book Unicorn Variation

Unicorn Variation (1982)

““Then it is impossible to get an honest answer from you.”
“If by ‘honest answer’ you mean for me to say what you want me to say, whether or not it is true, then I would say that you are correct.””

Roger Zelazny book Jack of Shadows

Source: Jack of Shadows (1971), Chapter 1 (p. 11)

“My favorite form is the short story. From an aesthetics stand point you really have to pare down to the bone. You can't write a throw-away scene.”

Phlogiston interview (1995)

“He doubted that his petition would be heard, however, since he did not feel that the gods would devote much attention to anything emitted from this particular portion of the world.”

Roger Zelazny book Jack of Shadows

Source: Jack of Shadows (1971), Chapter 2 (p. 16)

“Two days like icebergs—bleak, blank, half-melting, all frigid, mainly out of sight, and definitely a threat to peace of mind—drifted by and were good to put behind.”

The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth (1965)

“I thought about the Elder Gods and wondered at how they might change things if the way were opened for their return. The world could be a good place or a nasty place without supernatural intervention; we had worked out our own way of doing things, defined our own goods and evils. Some gods were great for individual ideals to be aimed at, rather than actual ends to be sought, here and now. As for the Elders, I could see no profit in intercourse with those who transcend utterly. I like to keep all such things in abstract, Platonic realms and not have to concern myself with physical presences.”

Roger Zelazny book A Night in the Lonesome October

October 21 (pp. 138-139)
A Night in the Lonesome October (1993)

“Toward the bright stars, from the dark ground, he hurled another petition, for whatever it was worth.”

Roger Zelazny book Jack of Shadows

Source: Jack of Shadows (1971), Chapter 2 (p. 19)

““From the shape of a cloud I know that a man in a distant city will quarrel with his wife three seasons hence and a murderer will be hanged before I finish speaking. From the falling of a stone I know the number of maidens being seduced and the movements of icebergs on the other side of the world. From the texture of the wind I know where next the lightning will fall. So long have I watched and so much am I part of all things, that nothing is hidden from me.”
“You know where I go?”
“Yes.”
“And what I would do there?”
“I know that, too.”
“Then tell me if you know, will I succeed in that which I desire?”
“You will succeed in that which you are about, but by then it may not be what you desire.”
“I do not understand you, Morningstar.”
“I know that, too. But that is the way it is with all oracles, Jack. When that which is foreseen comes to pass, the inquirer is no longer the same person he was when he posed the question. It is impossible to make a man understand what he will become with the passage of time; and it is only a future self to whom a prophecy is truly relevant.””

Roger Zelazny book Jack of Shadows

Source: Jack of Shadows (1971), Chapter 6 (p. 62)

“I had troubles of my own, and even the most heartening of philosophical vistas is no match for, say, a toothache, if it happens to be your own.”

Home is the Hangman (1975)

“Be warned, therefore, that one does not go to hell to light a cigarette.”

Roger Zelazny book This Immortal

Source: This Immortal (1965), p. 83

“Every now and then it's nice to stop and just look over what you've been writing and the way you've been writing it and sort of reassess it, and see if you've fallen into bad habits or there's something you'd like to get better at. One way of reexamining your own work is to work with somebody else. It's a learning experience. I don't want to get into a rut.”

As quoted in "Forever Amber" (October 1991) http://web.archive.org/web/20080212112534/http://zelazny.corrupt.net/amberever.html

“Cute,” she said, smiling. “If the liberal arts do nothing else they provide engaging metaphors for the thinking they displace.”

Home is the Hangman (1975)

“Is not love itself a form of a spell, where one is loved and the other loves, and the one who loves is compelled to do the other’s bidding? Of course. It is the same thing.”

Roger Zelazny book Jack of Shadows

Source: Jack of Shadows (1971), Chapter 11 (p. 118)

“I decided that the devil finds work for idle hands and thanked him for his suggestion.”

Home is the Hangman (1975)

“I got the idea for that story in May of 1979. I didn't know what it was going to be; I just thought it would be neat to write something about Jack the Ripper's dog, and ask Gahan Wilson to illustrate it, partly because of the fact that a dog is such an unusual person. No matter who owns a dog, if that person is nice to the animal, the dog is going to love him. I thought at the time, if you take a really despicable person, a serial killer or someone like that, and tell a story from his dog's point of view it would make him look pretty good.”

Explaining the origins http://www.roger-zelazny.com/repository/absmag.html of his last book, A Night in the Lonesome October in an interview (Absolute Magnitude Autumn/Winter 1994)

“Nothing we did in those days has caused a change.”

Roger Zelazny book This Immortal

“Because of what we did, things remained as they were, rather than getting worse,” I told him.
Source: This Immortal (1965), p. 131

“… Zelazny became a leading and representative figure of the American New Wave, with Harlan Ellison conspicuously goading all and sundry <…>.”

“… when your body was destroyed as we entered here I was able to mn? you quickly through the process by which I became an immortal energy being. Thought you might appreciate it.”

Из художественных произведений

“I had no doubts as to the correctness of my own beliefs, that human nature could be altered, that man could be forced to evolve morally.”

Roger Zelazny book Today We Choose Faces

Part 2, Chapter 9 (p. 147)
Today We Choose Faces (1973)