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Roger Zelazny Quotes
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Roger Joseph Zelazny was an American poet and writer of fantasy and science fiction short stories and novels, best known for The Chronicles of Amber. He won the Nebula Award three times and the Hugo Award six times , including two Hugos for novels: the serialized novel ...And Call Me Conrad , subsequently published under the title This Immortal and then the novel Lord of Light . Wikipedia  

✵ 13. May 1937 – 14. June 1995  •  Other names როჯერ ჟელიაზნი
Roger Zelazny: 112 quotes2 likes

Roger Zelazny Quotes

““Nothing we did in those days has caused a change.”
“Because of what we did, things remained as they were, rather than getting worse,” I told him.”

Roger Zelazny book This Immortal

Source: This Immortal (1965), p. 131

“Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything you may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness. Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to insure any possible benefit for which you may be eligible after the destruction of your body, I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure your receiving said benefit. I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen.”

Roger Zelazny

The Agnostic's Prayer from the novel Creatures of Light and Darkness (1969)

““Why do you tell me this?”
“Perhaps because I am a cat and it amuses me to be arbitrary and do you a good turn.””

Roger Zelazny book A Night in the Lonesome October

October 2 (p. 9)
A Night in the Lonesome October (1993)

“The dead are too much with us.”

Roger Zelazny Isle of the Dead

Source: Isle of the Dead (1969), Chapter 2 (p. 59)

“May the blind things at the bottom of the great sea, whose bellies are circles of light,” he said, “recall with pleasure the flavor of your marrow.”

Roger Zelazny Isle of the Dead

Source: Isle of the Dead (1969), Chapter (p. 125)

“The absence of a monument can, in its own way, be something of a monument also.”

Roger Zelazny book This Immortal

Source: This Immortal (1965), p. 60

“Between the black of yesterday and the white of tomorrow is the great gray of today, filled with nostalgia and fear of the future.”

Roger Zelazny book He Who Shapes

He Who Shapes (1965)

“There’s no need for your pretty lies now. It makes no difference to an old woman the things a young girl believed.”

Roger Zelazny book Jack of Shadows

Source: Jack of Shadows (1971), Chapter 3 (p. 32)

“My mind spun for a second before it drifted, and in that second I knew that of all pleasures—a drink of cold water when you are thirsty, liquor when you are not, sex, a cigarette after many days without one—there is none of them can compare with sleep. Sleep is best….”

Roger Zelazny book This Immortal

Source: This Immortal (1965), p. 169

““When you talk about being an ‘anticipator,’ of having a pretty good idea of when something’s going to happen—or how, or who will be there—isn’t that a kind of divination?”
“No. I think it’s more a kind of subconscious knack for dealing with statistics, against a fairly well-known field of actions.””

Roger Zelazny book A Night in the Lonesome October

October 23 (p. 173)
A Night in the Lonesome October (1993)

“Then I could turn around and justify that, by saying that it isn’t really paranoia if there really are people out to get you.”

Roger Zelazny Isle of the Dead

Source: Isle of the Dead (1969), Chapter 1 (p. 22)

“Mercy, I have learned, is a thing that is withheld from one whenever he most needs it,” he said. “Yet when he is in a position to grant it himself, those who withheld it previously cry out for it.”

Roger Zelazny book Jack of Shadows

Source: Jack of Shadows (1971), Chapter 9 (p. 99)

““Beware,” she recited a personal beatitude, “those who hunger and thirst after justice, for we will be satisfied.”
“And beware the meek,” she continued, “for we shall attempt to inherit the Earth.””

Roger Zelazny book He Who Shapes

He Who Shapes (1965)

“Everything that’s miserable in the world,” Nick the dwarf once said to me, “is because of beauty.”
“Not truth or goodness?” I’d asked.
“Oh, they help. But beauty is the culprit, the real principle of evil.”
“Not wealth?”

Roger Zelazny Isle of the Dead

“Money is beautiful.”
Source: Isle of the Dead (1969), Chapter 2 (p. 56)

“Of all the things a man may do, sleep probably contributes most to keeping him sane. It puts brackets about each day. If you do something foolish or painful today, you get irritated if somebody mentions it, today. If it happened yesterday, though, you can nod or chuckle, as the case may be. You’ve crossed through nothingness or dream to another island in Time.”

Roger Zelazny Isle of the Dead

Source: Isle of the Dead (1969), Chapter 5 (p. 101)

“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.”

Roger Zelazny

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.”

Roger Zelazny

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.”

Roger Zelazny

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.”

Roger Zelazny

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.”

Roger Zelazny

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.”

Roger Zelazny

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.”

Roger Zelazny

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 <…>.”

Roger Zelazny

“… 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.”

Roger Zelazny

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)

“There are circumstances under which the anomalous should be courted. Ignorance is one of them.”

Roger Zelazny book Today We Choose Faces

Part 2, Chapter 7 (p. 123)
Today We Choose Faces (1973)

“...And I have seen stranger things in a long and colorful career. Exactly. So what is the problem in believing my story?”

Roger Zelazny book Roadmarks

“You’ve nothing to back it up with. Even if you’re right, I’m still right in not believing without evidence.”

Chapter 28 (p. 172)
Roadmarks (1979)

“Anyone who rushes toward an unknown peril simply to satisfy a desire for excitement is a fool.”

Roger Zelazny book Today We Choose Faces

Part 2, Chapter 3 (p. 78)
Today We Choose Faces (1973)

“After signing it, he added the postscript: By the time you read this, you will already be dead.”

Roger Zelazny book Roadmarks

Source: Roadmarks (1979), Chapter 27 (p. 162)

“He was one of those scientist-artists who comes along every few centuries to justify the existence of that overworked word “genius.””

Roger Zelazny book Today We Choose Faces

Part 2, Chapter 6 (p. 108)
Today We Choose Faces (1973)

“Then it is impossible to get an honest answer from you.”

Roger Zelazny book Jack of Shadows

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

“Some are born to obscurity and others only achieve it through diligent effort.”

Roger Zelazny

A Museum Piece (p. 217)
Short fiction, The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth, and Other Stories (1971)

“I didn’t say anything because I didn’t have anything to say.”

Roger Zelazny

The Moment of the Storm (p. 181)
Short fiction, The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth, and Other Stories (1971)

“The days that followed were a game I enjoyed playing. Fake indecision is delicious when people want you to do something.”

Roger Zelazny

This Mortal Mountain (p. 135)
Short fiction, The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth, and Other Stories (1971)

“They’re here and we’re here, and they think we’re gods—maybe because we do nothing for them but make them miserable.”

Roger Zelazny

The Keys to December (p. 68)
Short fiction, The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth, and Other Stories (1971)

“The garden of life never seems to confine itself to the plot philosophers have laid out for its convenience maybe a few more tractors would do the trick.”

Roger Zelazny

Source: Short fiction, Home is the Hangman (1975), p. 149

“You cannot trick me into applying my principles to a hypothetical situation which will only work out the way that you want it to. Not when I am certain that it will not arise.”

Roger Zelazny

Source: Short fiction, Home is the Hangman (1975), p. 138