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R. A. Lafferty
112 quotes
“This is the Improbable Club," said the President-Emeritus in a heavy muffled voice, "and you things have made an improbable entry. Many unqualified persons have attempted to crash this Club, but you have done it literally. Whether you will be able to qualify for our high membership is another thing. It will not matter. We accept, for a brief moment at least, all who come here as members. We will quickly measure you one way or another. We have no living ex-members. Sit you down, all, and unwind your ears. Remember, each topper must be topped.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Be not nervous. In a very little while you will either be a member or you will not be.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For one crime there is no asylum even in the Club," whispered Horace the Snake, who had sharp ears for whispering. "For all other crimes we give asylum, for the most heinous crime in the universe we give no asylum." "What is the most heinous crime in the universe?" Roadstrum asked. "Killing a songbird.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The place itself, and ne'er a good word spoke of it, You shiver when you even make a joke of it.Though some go cocky, gaily in hand-basket there, The most fare sadly in a clammy casket there…Undying pain and gaping loss, no doubt of it. A wide way leading in and no way out of it!But none have told the blackest horror shrouded there — Tall teeming terror‚ but it sure is crowded there.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you have come with high expectations of anything, you have come to the wrong place.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You show signs of levity, and that is the one thing not permitted here. This place is for serious persons only. If you are not serious now, by hell you'll get serious pretty quick!”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This petty place cannot be Hell, Roadstrum? Ah, but it is my friend. That, you see, is the hell of it.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Man-a-bleeding, but they broke out of that place! You say it can't be done, but they did it. Their expectations had been too high, and no second-rate Hell could hold them. In a way it was their greatest feat. No one else had ever broken out of there before.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'm doing pretty good. I'm a seminal genius, they say, and I have the most sophisticated tools ever devised to work with. And I do build some good things for them. I'm quite successful. I'll tell you something, though. In the daytime, with all those sophisticated tools, and particularly if someone's watching me, I just stall around. But at night — " "Ah, at night! What do you do then, Hondstarfer?" "Put away those damned sophisticated tools and get my stone hammers. That's when I build the good stuff. Don't give me away, though, Roadstrum.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The eye in his hand winked at him dourly. Eye was a tough old gump, not given to easy enthusiasms. Roadstrum put it back in his pocket and once more contemplated his good fortune.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I will be double-damned to a better Hell than Hellpepper Planet if I will have my ending here in peace! Peace be not the end of my epic! An epic is already failed if it have an ending. I don't care how it ended the first time — it will not end the same now!”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“His soaring vaunt escaped the blooming ears of us, He's gone, he's dead, he's dirt, he disappears from us! Be this the death of highest thrust of human all? The flaming end of bright and shining crewmen all?Destroyed? His road is run? It's but a bend of it; Make no mistake, this only seems”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sometimes traveling people will be talking together. They will say how good it is in some places and how bad it is in others. And, sooner or later, one of them is bound to mention it. "Talk about really being out in the boondocks!" he will say, "there's a little planet named Earth —”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was their way of defying that tricky place Earth. That place will hurt you if you let it get the hop on you. They spooked the Earth spooks away with their stories. They whistled in the dark.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Pirates are perhaps the greatest invention of Earth people," Elizabeth interrupted loftily, "and their pirate stories are wonderful entertainment for small children. We have to give Earth people credit for that, they invented pirates.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A newspaper man has got to know when to keep his mouth and his mind shut. You might end up dead." "Isn't that the usual fate of men, Harry?”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Do not be deceived by the way men of bad faith misuse words and names," the Black Pope was saying, and now his head was quite powdered with snow. "It used to be only the English who excelled in the deception of words. Then the French went even beyond them, and now the whole world is adept at it.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Things are set up as contraries that are not even in the same category. Listen to me: the opposite of radical is superficial, the opposite of liberal is stingy; the opposite of conservative is destructive. Thus I will describe myself as a radical conservative liberal; but certain of the tainted red fish will swear that there can be no such fish as that. Beware of those who use words to mean their opposites. At the same time have pity on them, for usually this trick is their only stock in trade.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are only two possible statements that can be made about the worlds," the Black Pope of the Carlist Hills had lectured one day. "Alpha: There is a God. Omega: there is not a God. To adhere to either of these two statements strongly is to be logical at least. Not to do so is to be in the snivelling wasteland between and to have no point of contact with logic or reason.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Beware of those who manufacture final answers as they go along, of those who will catch you on their catch-phrases and let you perish in the traps. All the final answers were given in the beginning. They stand shining, above and beyond us, but they are always there to be seen. They may be too bright for us, they may be too clear for us. Well then, we must clarify our own eyes. Our task is to grow out until we reach them.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We ourselves become the bridges out over the interval that is the world and time. It is a daring thing to fling ourselves out over that void that is black and scarlet below and green and gold above. A bridge does not abandon its first shore when it grows out in spans towards the further one.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In this growing there are no really new things or new situations. There are only things growing out right, or things growing out deformed or shriveled. There is nothing new about railways or foundries or lathes or steel furnaces. They also are green-growing things. There is nothing new about organizations of men or of money. All these growing things are good, if they grow towards the final answers that were given in the beginning.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Listen now to a series of sayings that always come hard to brave people. Our own great movement will grow with its own impetus wherever it is not blighted. We will break up persons of blight and centers of blight. But often, and this will be the hard part for all of you to understand, we will warn and advise before we kill. And quite often we will not kill at all. Try to understand this.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Oh, come along, reader of the High Journal; if you do not love words, how will you love the communication? How will you forgive me my tropes, communicate the love?”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Gaetan had always had a terrible finality about him. Was this his great sin — that he was already completed? I will intercede for him tonight in my own not entirely mechanical way. To be completed is to be finished in so many ways! May that twinkling man Gaetan be undone a little and saved.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“True love is that we should hate whatever interferes with our vision of the high and the lowly.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Oh, I cannot abide these complacent clods," I exclaim. "I cannot relate to these opulent oafs who are laughing in the streets. They are not high enough or low enough. For my love I must find the poor, the deprived, the fornicators, the addicts, the drunkards, the unwashed, ..." "Oh, these are the poor," the clod told me. "This is the poorest street in town, Index Y-Z. It's hard to tell them apart now except that the poor spend more ostentatiously than the rich do.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Put the nightmare together. If you do not wake up screaming, you have not put it together well.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When you can't depend on the Devil, who can you depend on?”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Brannagan had been to more places than Finnegan had, including the same places. He had not only skirted the d'Entre-Casteau Islands, he had walked all over them. He had not only sailed through China Straits, he had dived in them for old wrecks. He had not only climbed the Cloudy Mountains, but had panned gold in their streams and dips.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A crisis should have thunder in it. If Finnegan and Dotty had been able to generate a crisis with thunder and lightning, things might have been different. But what if the last anchor-cable parts when no one knows it, and the drift has already begun? This is the crisis come and gone.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“R .A. Lafferty has always been uniquely his own man, but in this book he surpasses himself. It is wild, subtle, demonic, angelic, hilarious, tragic, poetic, a thundering melodrama and a quest into the depths of the human spirit. You'll think about it for a long time and probably go back to it more than once.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) first seen 1969 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Poul Anderson on Fourth Mansions (1969)
“The history of the Choctaw Indians has been told before and is still being told, but it has never been told in the way Lafferty tells it … Hannali is a buffalo bull of a man who should become one of the enduring characters in the literature of the American Indian.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One of the few writers who have made me laugh aloud.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Lafferty's first full-length work is an event. As with everything the man writes, the wind of imagination blows strongly, with the happy difference that in a novel he can reach full gale-force, Lafferty defies categorization; his work is unlike anyone else's. This is a great galloping madman of a novel, drenched in sound and color.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) first seen 1968 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Harlan Ellison on Past Master (1968)
“R. A. Lafferty, who died at 87 on March 18, was undoubtedly the finest writer of whatever it was that he did that ever there was. He was a genius, an oddball, a madman. His stories… are without precedent...”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Neil Gaiman in the Washington Post, April 4, 2002
“The works of R. A. Lafferty (1914-2002) are not too far out be reviewed by an ordinary human being. However, one must reach into an awkwardly positioned dimension to lay hold of them.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One of the things I loved about collaborating with Nick was that he was like R. A. Lafferty. Remember those old books for science fiction beginners, the ones that said “If you like Asimov, read Clement” or “If you like Sheckley, read Tenn”? And then you’d come to “If you like Lafferty, buy everything of his you can find before no one writes or thinks remotely like him.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[R. A. Lafferty] has to be the maddest, the most colorful, the most unexpected writer alive.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“R. A. Lafferty is unique, in the old, unspoiled sense of the word. A genius as wild and joyful, delightful and unpredictable as his comes along but once in a lifetime — this lifetime. Cherish him. If there were no Lafferty, we would lack the imagination to invent him.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) first seen 1991 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Michael Swanwick, quoted in the first edition of Lafferty in Orbit (1991)
“It's an American classic.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Lafferty deliberately creates the mythic effect through a technique I call effective arcanum, and that rather than examining his work with the conventional tools of science fiction criticism, we need to examine his system — firstly for our pleasure, and secondly so that we may re-create it (because the sign of an authentic religo-magical system is the power of the followers to reproduce the results).”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No true reader who has read as much as a single story by Raphael Aloysius Lafferty needs to be told that he is our most original writer. … Just about everything Lafferty writes is fun, is witty, is entertaining and playful. But it is not easy, for it is a mingling of allegory with myth, and of both with something more ... In fact, he may not be just ours, but the most original writer in the history of literature.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) first seen 1990 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Gene Wolfe, in the introduction to Episodes of the Argo (1990), later published in Castle of Days (1995)
“Lafferty has the power which sets fire behind your eyeballs. There is warmth, illumination, and a certain joy attendant upon the experience. He's good.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) first seen 1970 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Roger Zelazny, in a cover blurb for Nine Hundred Grandmothers (1970)
“We come to the edge of the world now,” the dreamer said, “and only I will know the way here.” “It is not the edge of the world,” one of the seamen said. “See, here is the map, and here we are on it. As you can see, it is a long way to the edge of the world.” “The map is wrong,” the dreamer said, “let me fix it.” He tore the map in two. “Look now,” the dreamer pointed. “Are we not now at the edge of the world?” All saw that they were; whereupon all the seamen began to jump off the ship, and try to swim back to safety. And the other ships of the array, one by one, upended themselves and plunged into the abyss at the edge of the water. This really was the edge of the world, and the waters rushed over it.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) first seen 1969 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Configuration of the North Shore (1969), in Damon Knight (ed.), Orbit 5, p. 120
“Science Fiction has long been babbling about cosmic destructions and the ending of either physical or civilized worlds, but it has all been displaced babble. SF has been carrying on about near-future or far-future destructions and its mind-set will not allow it to realize that the destruction of our world has already happened in the quite recent past, that today is "The Day After The World Ended". … I am speaking literally about a real happening, the end of the world in which we lived till fairly recent years. The destruction or unstructuring of that world, which is still sometimes referred to as "Western Civilization" or "Modern Civilization", happened suddenly, some time in the half century between 1912 and 1962. That world, which was "The World" for a few centuries, is gone. Though it ended quite recently, the amnesia concerning its ending is general. Several historiographers have given the opinion that these amnesias are features common to all "ends of worlds". Nobody now remembers our late world very clearly, and nobody will ever remember it clearly in the natural order of things. It can't be recollected because recollection is one of the things it took with it when it went...”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Day After the World Ended, notes for a speech at DeepSouthCon'79, New Orleans (21 July 1979), later published in It's Down the Slippery Cellar Stairs (1995)
“I don't regard myself as a Surrealist in the sense of the "Surrealist Manifesto" published by Andre Breton in 1924. To me, that Manifesto is somewhat dated, being a recoil from World War I, and being too heavily Freudian. My own unconscious is more Jungian than Freudian. But if Breton hadn't staked claim to the name, I would probably call myself a Surrealist in the "Remembrance of Things Within" sense, but not in the "world of dream and fantasy joined to the everyday rational world, becoming 'an absolute reality, a surreality'." I suppose that I believe in another sort of a surreality or super-reality, but it would have to be on a wider basis than the encounters of myself and me. As often as not, it is the subconscious that supplies the rational element, and the exterior world that supplies the dream and fantasy feeling.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) first seen 1991 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in "My interview with R.A. Lafferty", by Tom Jackson, originally published in Lan's Lantern #39 (1991)
“Mr. Lafferty says, "I'm the fellow who, for more than a quarter century, has faithfully maintained the thesis that all writers should be funny-looking and all stories should be funny. Almost all of the evil in the world is brought about by handsome writers doing pompous pieces. But sometimes readers tell me that such a story of mine is not funny at all. 'Wait, wait,' I tell them. 'You're holding it upside-down. Now try it.' And sure enough it is funny if they get ahold of it right. This caution is especially applicable to the story 'Junkyard Thoughts.' Be sure you're not holding it upside-down or it will be merely bewildering.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Introduction to 'Junkyard Thoughts' in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (February 1986)
“I tried to tell you, but words will not convey it. One has to be inside it to comprehend the magnitude. … It was the beginning. It's the only thing there is. But it was haphazard for so many aeons that it spooks me to think about it. There were always three or four maintaining it, but there was no one person strong enough to take it all over. "Somewhere there must be someone strong enough to take it all over," I said to myself in a direful moment, but the strongest person I could think of was myself. I've been doing it ever since. … By my attention I hold it all in being. Nothing exists unless it is perceived. If perception fails for a moment, then that thing fails forever. … I hate to be misjudged. They say that I bear it all on my shoulders, as though I were a stud or a balk. It's not on my great shoulders, it is amazing head on my great shoulders that maintains all.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Roadstrum had always believed that he had troubles enough of his own. He seldom borrowed trouble, and never on usurious terms. He knew that it was a solid thing that sheep do not gather in taverns and drink beer, not even potato beer; that they do not sing, not even badly; that they do not tell stories. But a stranger can easily make trouble for himself on a strange world by challenging local customs. "But I am the greet Roadstrum," he said, suddenly and loudly. "I am a great one for winning justice for the lowly, and I do not scare easily. I threw the great Atlas at the wrestle, and who else can say as much? I suffer from the heroic sickness every third day about nightfall, and I am not sure whether this is the third day or not. I say you are men and not sheep. I say: Arise and be men indeed!" "It has been tried before," said Roadstrum's friend, the sheep, "and it didn't work." "You have tried a revolt, and it failed?" "No, no, another man tried to incite us to revolt, and failed.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source