Roger Zelazny: Goodness

Roger Zelazny was American speculative fiction writer. Explore interesting quotes on goodness.
Roger Zelazny: 224   quotes 2   likes

“I've always been impulsive. My thinking is usually pretty good, but I always seem to do it after I do my talking—by which time I've generally destroyed all basis for further conversation.”

Roger Zelazny book This Immortal

Source: This Immortal (1965), pp. 9-10

Thinking , Time

“Don't wake me for the end of the world unless it has very good special effects.”

Roger Zelazny Prince of Chaos

Source: Prince of Chaos

World

“Good-bye and hello, as always.”

Roger Zelazny The Courts of Chaos

Source: The Courts of Chaos

“I'd had a long talk with Bob Silverberg, who was very influential on my early career. He'd, out of the kindness of his heart, at a convention told me that he thought I'd made several mistakes in the way I was disposing of my stories. And I said, "I don't understand what you mean, but I'll be glad to buy you a few drinks, if you'll tell me about it". So we adjourned to the bar and sat there a couple of hours. He was drinking Bloody Marys back then; I was drinking Black Russians. And he told me all sorts of things which carried me over the next several years; it was a lot of information for a couple of drinks. He told me that the first thing I should do if I wanted to write full-time was to get a really good agent. He said that after a while the business end of writing takes too much of the writing time. Better to pay someone ten percent and find that you're still more than ten percent ahead in the end.
Which is true. My present agent says that he always feels that a good agent during the course of a year should earn back for his client at least the ten percent he takes by way of commission, so the client's really nothing out. And what he should ideally do is make him more money than the ten percent.”

Roger Zelazny

Phlogiston interview (1995)

Money , Way , Feeling , Drink

“It is a city of neat cottages and cobbled streets where wander cats without number, for the enlightened legislators of long ago laid down laws for our protection. A good, kind village, where travelers take their ease and pet the cats, making much of them, which is as it should be.”

Roger Zelazny book A Night in the Lonesome October

October 22 (p. 160)
A Night in the Lonesome October (1993)

Law , Travel , Cats

“I had wanted to go after her, to explain my part in what had happened. But I knew it would do no good, so why lose face? When a fairy tale blows up and the dream dust settles and you find yourself standing there, knowing that the last line will never be written, why not omit any exercises in futility?”

Roger Zelazny Isle of the Dead

Source: Isle of the Dead (1969), Chapter 8 (p. 187)

Dreams , Exercises , Parting

“I was cruising along on Tokyo Bay, and suddenly this was the answer, looming, the heaped remains of everything that goes down and does not come again to shore, life’s giant kitchen-midden, the rubbish heap that remains after all things pass, the place that stands in testament to the futility of all ideals and intentions, good or bad, the rock that smashes values, there, signalizing the ultimate uselessness of life itself, which must one day be broken upon it, not to rise, no, never, not ever, again.”

Roger Zelazny Isle of the Dead

Source: Isle of the Dead (1969), Chapter 7 (p. 154)

Life

“It is no shame to lose to me, mortal. Even among mythical creatures there are very few who can give a unicorn a good game."
"I am pleased that you were not wholly bored," Martin said. "Now will you tell me what you were talking about concerning the destruction of my species?”

Roger Zelazny book Unicorn Variation

"Oh, that," Tlingel replied.
Unicorn Variation (1982)

Game

“Times have changed since the Good Book was written, and you can’t hold with a purely Fundamentalist approach in complex times.”

Roger Zelazny

Home is the Hangman (1975)

Books , Change , Time

“Never trust a cat, anyway. All they’re good for is stringing tennis racquets.”

Roger Zelazny book A Night in the Lonesome October

October 6 (p. 28)
A Night in the Lonesome October (1993)

Cats

““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)

Cats

““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)

Idea , Thinking

“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)

Money , Truth , World , Beauty

“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)

Peace

“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)

God , World , Way , Evil

“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)

Love , Dogs , Idea , Time