115 quotes
Knowledge was what he needed. Fear was what he had.
Four for Tomorrow (1967)
They’re here and we’re here, and they think we’re gods—maybe because we do nothing for them but make them miserable.
The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth, and Other Stories (1971)
“What did you say to her?”
“I gave her a clinic referral card that said, ‘Diagnosis: Bitch. Prescription: Drug therapy and a tight gag.’”
The Dream Master (1966)
“It was an assassination attempt, wasn’t it?”
“Who knows? Yesterday’s politics are not worth the paper wasted on its promises, its threats.”
The Last Defender of Camelot (1980)
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, and Other Stories (1971)
There is a part of me which likes to see things through allusions and touched with mystery. And the American part never trusts anything and is always looking for the real story behind the front one.
Frost & Fire (1989)
I think what I'm going to do is vary my output, do some straight science fiction and some straight fantasy that doesn't involve mythology, and composites.
Death and Light are everywhere, always, and they begin, end, strive, attend, into and upon the Dream of the Nameless that is the world, burning words within Samsara, perhaps to create a thing of beauty.
Lord of Light (1967)
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.
Unicorn Variations (1983)
The price of mortal existence is age.
Four for Tomorrow (1967)
The dead are too much with us.
Isle of the Dead (1969)
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.
Jack of Shadows (1971)
“Let’s go to New Hampshire.”
“What’s wrong with Scotland?”
“I’ve never been to New Hampshire.”
“I have, and I don’t like it. It looks like your description of the moon.”
Four for Tomorrow (1967)
I was, at one level, still plagiarizing my earlier self. Nothing wrong with that, if some growth has occurred in the meantime.
Frost & Fire (1989)
“And you, I take it, are Red Dorakeen?”
“That is correct. Anything I can do for you?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. You can die.”
Roadmarks (1979)
Such is the essence of valor: an unthinking moment, a spark along the spinal nerves, predetermined by the sum total of everything you have ever done, wished to do or not to do, and wish you had done, or hadn’t, and then comes the pain.
The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth, and Other Stories (1971)
“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.”
A Night in the Lonesome October (1993)
The spoon came alive with spoon-ness and the ball with ball-ness and the block with block-ness, and the girl laughed.
“I believe I love you,” he mentioned.
“Fortunately, love does not require an act of faith,” she noted, accepting a light for her cigar, “because I don’t believe in anything.”
Four for Tomorrow (1967)
And I came to the land where the sun is a tarnished penny, where the wind is a whip, where two moons play at hot rod games, and a hell of sand gives you the incendiary itches whenever you look at it.
Four for Tomorrow (1967)