129 quotes
Look, if he’s alive, there’s nothing we have to do about it. If he’s dead, there’s nothing we can do.
Tales of Nevèrÿon (1979)
I must remember my own origins. Once I was as ignorant as you; I swear, though, I can’t remember when.
The Einstein Intersection (1967)
But almost as if presenting the image of some ironic answer, the wings flapped against a sudden, high, unfelt breeze, and the beast, here shorn of all fables, rose and rose—for a while—under the night.
Tales of Nevèrÿon (1979)
I believe art is a wholly formal enterprise, encompassing almost all the tenets that the nineteenth century spoke of as l’art pour l’art, tenets which have made twentieth century’s experimentation possible. (What postmodern doesn’t?)
Flight from Nevèrÿon (1985)
Yes, I learned about monsters on that trip. And I learned about them in these encounters afterward:
First, monsters are real.
Second, they are us.
Flight from Nevèrÿon (1985)
The captain is different too, Cyana. Before, the Roc flew under half a man, a man who’d only known victory. Now I’m a whole man. I know defeat as well.
Nova (1968)
That’s the army. But our job was to make the rest of you think it was safe and glorious and good, too. Boys into men? Discipline that isn’t self-discipline doesn’t mean thing to a boy.
City of a Thousand Suns (1965)
Dictators during the entire history of this planet have used similar techniques. By not letting the people of their country know what conditions existed outside their boundaries, they could get the people to fight to stay in those conditions.
The Jewels of Aptor (1962)
As morning branded the sea, darkness fell away at the far side of the beach. I turned to follow it.
The Einstein Intersection (1967)
You know, Mouse, I envy the captain. He’s got a mission. And his obsession precludes all that wondering about what other people think of him.
Nova (1968)
Life, I sometimes think—like dreams, like stories, like plans, even like lies if you will—is to be pondered on, interpreted, interrogated: but you had best not try to change it too radically in the middle, or you risk never finding its secret.
Flight from Nevèrÿon (1985)
“The aristocracy,” she repeated. “At its worst, a sargasso of every conceivable neurosis society may have; by naming itself it has agreed to its own death. But at least it has had the dignity to applaud its own order of execution in the past if the document is eloquent.”
City of a Thousand Suns (1965)
You're not looking for me, you know. I'm looking for you.
The Einstein Intersection (1967)
It is a magic book. Words mean things. When you put them together they speak.
Equinox (1973)
Simply turn them loose in the haze of their own injured psyches and they will create an enemy, greater and more malignant than any a psychologist could create for them, always hidden behind their own terror.
The Towers of Toron (1964)
Gorgik began to learn that most valuable of lessons without which no social progress is possible: If you are to stay in the good graces of the powerful, you had best, however unobtrusively, please the servants of the powerful.
Tales of Nevèrÿon (1979)
Perhaps it's good you're not going to write anymore: you'd have to start considering all those dull things like your relation to your audience, the relation between your personality and your poetry, the relation between your poetry and all the poetry before it.
Dhalgren (1975)
Oh, I assure you—I’m only a little outlaw. Don’t fear me, friend. I never broke any big laws. I just forget and do what I want sometimes, and discover it wasn’t what someone else wanted me to do.
They Fly at Çiron (1993)
All you are seeing is your own nostalgia for your girlhood trips up here into the hills, which were no doubt colored with the pleasantries of youth and idealism, which is—won’t you admit it?—finally just a form of ignorance.
Tales of Nevèrÿon (1979)
Life is hard for everyone, and we must not take credit ourselves for the little that others can do with theirs. Rather look instead to whom we can give credit, if not thanks, for what little we have been able to do with our own.
Flight from Nevèrÿon (1985)