Quotes from book
Nifft the Lean

Name: Nifft the Lean
Author: Michael Shea

Nifft, a master thief, journeys to the Place of the Raging Dead, a virtual hell, in search of the Wizard's Key

“Now a true ocean is the sky’s open floor—that’s the feeling men love in it, the reason they venture upon it, apart from gain or exploration.”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Part 3, Chapter 9 (p. 145)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

“We’re none of us more than wisps of desire and imagining! What man is not, at the center of his mind, a ghostly wish-to-be haunting the jerry-built habitation of his imperfect acts? Haunting the maze of what-has-been?”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Part 3, Chapter 11 (p. 171)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

“It was more than sad, the eternal unteachability of youth.”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Part 3, Chapter 16 (p. 208)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

“But ah! what a drear hell it was we now had to venture through! What a maelstrom of relentless gorging, one creature upon another! The claws and jaws of the upper world are red enough—who denies it?—but the carnage has intermissions, periods of amiable association, zones of green peace and fructification. In the subworlds, the merciless seethe of appetites never simmers down.”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Part 3, Chapter 8 (p. 142)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

“It’s always been an exceedingly curious thing to me, just how incurious most people are about all save their own little island of time and place in the world.”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Part 4, Chapter 13 (p. 301)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

“Deeper and deeper. Ever greater power. Ever greater evil.”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Part 3, Chapter 12 (p. 181)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

“Ambitious dabblers in sorcery add much to the hell that is on earth.”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Part 3, Chapter 14 (p. 191)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

“Weigh then your wealth, and judge if it’s more dear
To you than life. If not, your course is clear.”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Part 4, “The Goddess in Glass,” Chapter 10 (p. 285)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

“The assumption that we would ever be called upon to perform this second task now appeared quite clearly to me as the most extravagant folly, based on a wild delusion conceived by a raving idiot.”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Part 3, Chapter 8 (p. 140)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

“And most important, nothing was to be taken for granted in that place. In Death’s world, any covenant, no matter how mighty, can fall null—any spell, however cogent, can be abrogated. The only certain law in that place is Death itself.”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Part 1, Chapter 6 (p. 49)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

““He’s here, of course, strictly through his own ambitious carelessness.”
“Prime flaws of youth, of course—but also its strengths, this carelessness and mbition.””

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Part 3, Chapter 14 (p. 191)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

“Rage and wounded pride look painful on a young face. Sixteen is a difficult age to get on with. There’s much to like—the freshness, the force of conviction. But there is also a certain arrogance, an inevitable concomitant of development, perhaps, which one must always struggle to forgive.”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Part 3, Chapter 16 (p. 203)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

““You realize of course, Barnar, that it is simply not possible that we’re actually doing this?”
“I’ve come to the same comforting conclusion, old friend. Therefore let’s away—an impossibility can only do us an unreal sort of harm, after all.””

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Part 3, Chapter 8 (p. 139)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

“Freedom! That belabored word! It is a big, empty word, and yet, when some experience reminds us what freedom is, how clear and particular its meaning becomes, how unspeakably sweet, and full!”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Part 3, Chapter 19 (p. 226)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

“Those feats of deep cunning and brave flair—we’re all allotted a few of them, and we get no more, no matter what our longing is. And you know, you’re lucky if you even recognize when you’re having your best moments. Half the time your soul is looking the other way when they come. And you never grow wise enough to know what they were until you have passed the hope of of having more.”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Part 1, “Come Then, Mortal. We Will Seek Her Soul,” Chapter 2 (p. 20)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

“Dalissem chuckled. It felt like being grinned at by a big mountain cat—delightful for the beauty of the animal, disturbing for the possible sequel.”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Part 1, Chapter 2 (p. 27)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

“I shall present as certain only those data corroborated by exhaustive research, or by my own personal investigations, as I am not untraveled for a bookish man. Wherever doubt exists, I shall unambiguously state its degree and nature, along with whatever grounds I may have for preferring one hypothesis over another. If, despite all I have said, the reader disdains such honest ambiguity, and stubbornly prefers the unequivocal assertiveness to be found in factitious travelogues penned by raffish “explorers,” or in the specious “natural histories” compiled by crapulous and unprincipled hacks who have never left their squalid lofts in Scrivener’s Row, then there is nothing further I can do, and I leave him, with apologies, to his deception.”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Prologue (p. 10)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

“And I make bold to say that I am not the only one of my countrymen who could profit from taking this admonition to heart.”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Prologue (p. 8)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

“At that age you invent extravagant compensations for bruises to your dignity.”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Part 3, Chapter 3 (p. 118)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

“It is a bitter thing that each of us must finally be blown out like a candle, and have the unique ardor of his individual flame choked off, and sucked utterly away like smoke in the dark. Do we ever accept this in our hearts, any of us? The waste of knowledge! It never ceases to be…infuriating.”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Prologue, “Shag Margold’s Eulogy of Nifft the Lean, His Dear Friend” (p. 5; ellipsis in the original)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

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