Jack Vance Quotes

1916–2013 United States

John Holbrook Vance (August 28, 1916 – May 26, 2013) was an award-winning science fiction and fantasy author, who wrote the four-book Dying Earth series.

United States
Novelists
Science fiction authors

Also known as: Vance, Jack, Lyonesse Trilogy

Random Jack Vance quote

296 quotes

I can tell you this at least. The most convincing disguise for legitimacy is legitimacy itself.

Demon Princes (1964)

I see that you will make a competent inspector after all. You have a natural bent for subterfuge and deceit.

Maske: Thaery (1976)

Jaro, my dear, there is no mystery about violence. It is the reflexive act of brutes, boors and moral defectives.

Night Lamp (1996)

It is as well that the amok has no weapons other than his knife. Otherwise he would kill twenty where now he kills one.

The Augmented Agent and Other Stories (1986)

Who are our basic enemies? This is a secret, unknown even to those basic enemies.

Demon Princes (1964)

I have much to say about the world, but every year the compulsion dwindles. Let them live and die; it is all one to me.

Demon Princes (1964)

The central problem, so it seemed, was to learn from whose eye he looked forth. Much, after all, would depend upon his viewpoint.

Demon Princes (1964)

Are musicians unlike other men? Beget and forget, that’s how it goes.

Durdane series (1971)

Enough of this intolerable inanity! I propose that such loquacity passes beyond the scope of nuisance and over the verge of turpitude.

Dying Earth (1950)

My fees are not too high. Your wage scale may simply be too low.

Showboat World (1975)

Die then. This is my cure for sore knees.

Lyonesse Trilogy (1983)

And I understand they are, in a sense, artists? That is to say, they understand the creative process, the sublimation of fact to symbol and the use of symbol to suggest emotion?

Space Opera (1965)

By an axiom of cultural anthropology, the more isolated a community, the more idiosyncratic become its customs and conventions. This of course is not necessarily disadvantageous.

Alastor trilogy (1973)

There can be no doubt as to the facts as I have stated them. Orthodoxy derives from this axiomatic foundation, and the two systems are mutually reinforcing: hence each is doubly validated.

Dying Earth (1950)

Urban folk, dealing as they do in ideas and abstractions, become conditioned to unreality. Then, wherever the fabric of civilization breaks, these people are as helpless as fish out of water.

The Gray Prince (1975)

Guyal reined his horse and reflected that flowers were rarely cherished by persons of hostile disposition.

Dying Earth (1950)

If there were no such creatures as minstrel-maidens, it would be necessary to invent them.

The Dragon Masters (1962)

“And thereby hangs a tale,” as the monkey said while describing the cat’s rear-quarters.

Demon Princes (1964)

Perhaps you mistake assurance for insolence…Agreed, the qualities sometimes converge.

Alastor trilogy (1973)

The repair system exists to keep the machinery operating but no provision had been made to repair the repair system.

The Augmented Agent and Other Stories (1986)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Jack Vance (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.