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Roger Zelazny
148 quotes
“If I had just done something decent and noble, why did I feel so stupid about it? Probably because it was out of character.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But love can mean many things. It can be an instrument of aggression or a function of disease.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have no intention of climbing Fuji and accounting for myself, to God or to anything else. Only the insecure and the uncertain require justification. I do what I must. If the deities have any questions they can come down from Fuji and ask me. Otherwise, this is the closest commerce between us. That which transcends should only be admired from afar.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Faith is beyond me. I will settle for hope.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But I believe it was the Rilke who said that life is a game we must begin playing before we have learned the rules. Do we ever? Are there really rules? Perhaps I read too many poets.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We revisit the mental landscape of childhood in times of trouble.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But I remember that Ernest Hemingway told Bernard Berenson that the secret of his greatest book was that there was no symbolism. The sea was the sea, the old man an old man, the boy a boy, the marlin a marlin, and the sharks the same as other sharks. People empower these things themselves, groping beneath the surface, always looking for more.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mirror, mirror, why does the real world so seldom cooperate with our aesthetic enthusiasms?”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And what is imagination?” “A thing born of feeling and reason.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I wonder what Hokusai would have done in contemporary times? He is silent on the matter.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“According to John Pfeiffer, author of The Human Brain, “There is an entire universe packed inside your skull, a compact model of your surroundings based on all the experiences you have accumulated during the course of a lifetime. Of necessity such a model is limited by the range of one’s perceptions and the nature of one’s experiences. Thus, the world about which I write, the world to which I hold up my distorting mirror, is not the real world in any ultimate sense. It is only my limited, personal image of the real world.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My feelings are that science fiction, with its rational, quasi-documentable approach to existence, springs from the well-lighted, well-regulated areas of our private universes, whereas fantasy, in the tradition of its historical origins, has its roots in the dark areas. Somewhere, I already hear voices raised in objection to my implication that fantasy springs from ignorance and science fiction from enlightenment. In a way it is true, and in a way it is not.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You don’t know what it’s like to be cut off from a whole area of stimuli! To know that a Mongoloid idiot can experience something you can never know—and that he cannot appreciate it because, like you, he was condemned before birth in a court of biological happenstance, in a place where there is no justice—only fortuity, pure and simple.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The universe did not invent justice. Man did. Unfortunately, man must reside in the universe.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Statistics aren’t the same thing as destiny, Bennie. Everybody makes his own.” “Statistics or destiny?” “Both, I guess.” “I think that if something’s going to happen, it’s going to happen.” “I don’t. I happen to think that the human will, backed by a sane mind can exercise some measure of control over events. If I didn’t think so, I wouldn’t be in the racket I’m in.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The power to hurt,” he said, snapping on a lapel microphone and activating his recorder, “has evolved in a direct relationship to technological advancement.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Between the black of yesterday and the white of tomorrow is the great gray of today, filled with nostalgia and fear of the future.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But while pleasure and pain are rooted in biology, they are conditioned by society: thus are values to be derived.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An intense study of mental illness is often quite revealing as to the nature of the stresses in the society where the illness was made. If anxiety patterns fall into special groups and classes, then something of the discontent of society can be learned from them.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Any human experience should be describable and interpretable—by a good enough writer.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Her thirtieth birthday, like a huge black cloud, filled an April but four months distant.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He who sleeps well enters the day somewhere in the middle of the second act.” “Myself, I usually come in around intermission and ask someone for a synopsis,” she explained.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I intend to do that after dinner,” he stated, “because I believe in the ritualistic value of rescue-motions. They shall be made.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Beware,” she recited a personal beatitude, “those who hunger and thirst after justice, for we will be satisfied.” “And beware the meek,” she continued, “for we shall attempt to inherit the Earth.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Do you think they’re really people?” “Naw, they’re too good.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What did you say to her?” “I gave her a clinic referral card that said, ‘Diagnosis: Bitch. Prescription: Drug therapy and a tight gag.’”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I've always been impulsive. My thinking is usually pretty good, but I always seem to do it after I do my talking—by which time I've generally destroyed all basis for further conversation.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I wasn’t disappointed, inasmuch as I expected nothing.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The absence of a monument can, in its own way, be something of a monument also.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Be warned, therefore, that one does not go to hell to light a cigarette.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nothing we did in those days has caused a change.” “Because of what we did, things remained as they were, rather than getting worse,” I told him.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My mind spun for a second before it drifted, and in that second I knew that of all pleasures—a drink of cold water when you are thirsty, liquor when you are not, sex, a cigarette after many days without one—there is none of them can compare with sleep. Sleep is best....”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is difficult to understand. It seems brutal, it seems harsh…” “It is life and it is death. It is the greatest blessing and the greatest curse in the universe. You do not have to understand it, Wakim. Your comprehension or your lack of it, your approval or your disapproval, will in no way alter its operation.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This day she’ll off across the sky on her own wild ways to show.… There, in the worlds of the Life and the Death, the worlds that she used to know. Now, some say her name is Mercy and others say it’s Lust. Her secret name is Isis. Her secret soul is dust.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Oh, cynical monger of indulgences! ’Twould take a man of the cloth to work a scheme like that!”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Silence, Set!” cries Anubis. “Don’t listen to him, Madrak. He sees your weakness, as he sees the weaknesses of all things he encounters. He seeks to draw you onto a battlefield of another sort, one where you struggle against yourself, to be beaten by the guilt he has contrived for you. Ignore him!”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This added the element of mystery that made the comparison inevitable: life is a thing that reminds me quite a bit of the beaches around Tokyo Bay. Anything goes. Strange and unique things are being washed up all the time. I’m one of them and so are you. We spend some time on the beach, maybe side by side, and then that slopping, smelling, chilly thing rakes it with the liquid fingers of a crumbling hand and some of the things are gone again.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Then I could turn around and justify that, by saying that it isn’t really paranoia if there really are people out to get you.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Symbols, by their very nature, conceal as well as indicate, damn them!”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I watched the spinning stars, grateful, sad and proud, as only a man who has outlived his destiny and realizes he might yet forge himself another, can be.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Everything that’s miserable in the world,” Nick the dwarf once said to me, “is because of beauty.” “Not truth or goodness?” I’d asked. “Oh, they help. But beauty is the culprit, the real principle of evil.” “Not wealth?” “Money is beautiful.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nick swore he’d die with this boots on, on some exotic safari, but he found his Kilimanjaro in a hospital on Earth, where they’d cured everything that was bothering him, except for the galloping pneumonia he’d picked up in the hospital. That had been, roughly, two hundred and fifty years ago. I’d been a pallbearer.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The dead are too much with us.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Earth grates on my nerves. It gives me a big pain these days. That’s why I live out here. Earth is overcrowded, bureaucratic, unhealthy, and suffering from too many mass-psychoses to bother classifying.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There comes a time in the history of all bureaucracies when they must inevitably parody their own functions.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was born on the planet Earth, into the middle of the twentieth century, that period in the history of the race when man succeeded in casting off many of the inhibitions and taboos laid upon him by tradition, reveled for a brief time, and then discovered that it didn’t make a bloody bit of difference that he had. He was still just as dead when he died, and he was still faced with every life-death problem that had confronted him before, compounded by the fact that Malthus was right.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The stars blazed like the love of God, cold and distant.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Of all the things a man may do, sleep probably contributes most to keeping him sane. It puts brackets about each day. If you do something foolish or painful today, you get irritated if somebody mentions it, today. If it happened yesterday, though, you can nod or chuckle, as the case may be. You’ve crossed through nothingness or dream to another island in Time.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Dwelling beside a body of water is tonic for the weary psyche. Sea smells, sea birds, seawrack, sands—alternately cool, warm, moist and dry—a taste of brine and the presence of the rocking, slopping bluegraygreen spit-flecked waters, has the effect of rinsing the emotions, bathing the outlook, bleaching the conscience.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source