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Roger Zelazny

148 quotes

“May the blind things at the bottom of the great sea, whose bellies are circles of light,” he said, “recall with pleasure the flavor of your marrow.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I’d lived far too long, and with every day that passed the odds kept growing against my lasting much longer. Although they didn’t put it quite that way when giving the sales pitch, my insurance company’s attitude is reflected in the size of the premiums involved.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was cruising along on Tokyo Bay, and suddenly this was the answer, looming, the heaped remains of everything that goes down and does not come again to shore, life’s giant kitchen-midden, the rubbish heap that remains after all things pass, the place that stands in testament to the futility of all ideals and intentions, good or bad, the rock that smashes values, there, signalizing the ultimate uselessness of life itself, which must one day be broken upon it, not to rise, no, never, not ever, again.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Could Yarl the Omnipotent create a stone so heavy he couldn’t lift it?” Green Green asked him. ”No,” said Courtcour. ”Why not?” ”He would not.” ”That is no answer.” ”Yes, it is. Think about it. Would you?”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even if they had been real gods, what did it matter? What was it to me? Here I was still, right where I was born a thousand or so years before, in the middle of the human condition—namely, rubbish and pain. If the gods were real, their only relationship with us was to use us to play their games. Screw them all.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I had wanted to go after her, to explain my part in what had happened. But I knew it would do no good, so why lose face? When a fairy tale blows up and the dream dust settles and you find yourself standing there, knowing that the last line will never be written, why not omit any exercises in futility?”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Buy into a rising market,” had always been his philosophy, not to mention his religion, sex, politics, and aesthetics.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If we don’t make it, the population of the continent may be cut in half.” “If it’s a question of them or me, I’d rather it was them.” “I sometimes wonder how people like you happen.” “The same way as anybody else, mister, and it’s fun for a couple people for a while, and then the trouble starts.” “What did they ever do to you, Hell?” “Nothing. What did they ever do for me? Nothing. Nothing. What do I owe them? The same.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Then it is impossible to get an honest answer from you.” “If by ‘honest answer’ you mean for me to say what you want me to say, whether or not it is true, then I would say that you are correct.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He doubted that his petition would be heard, however, since he did not feel that the gods would devote much attention to anything emitted from this particular portion of the world.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Toward the bright stars, from the dark ground, he hurled another petition, for whatever it was worth.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There’s no need for your pretty lies now. It makes no difference to an old woman the things a young girl believed.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So do not speak to me of souls when you have never seen one, man.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You were both correct,” said Morningstar. “It is the same thing that you both describe, although neither of you sees it as it really is. Each of you colors reality in keeping with your means of controlling it. For if it is uncontrollable, you fear it. Sometimes then, you color it incomprehensible. In your case, a machine; in theirs, a demon.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have noted, too, that when it comes to matters of security the laws are considerably relaxed.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mercy, I have learned, is a thing that is withheld from one whenever he most needs it,” he said. “Yet when he is in a position to grant it himself, those who withheld it previously cry out for it.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life is seldom so pivotally crisis-conditioned a thing as novelists would have us believe. While it is true that we sometimes recover from shocks with a sense of the freshness of reality and the wonder of existence, this state of mind does pass away—and fairly rapidly, at that—leaving both reality and ourselves untransfigured once more.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Anyone who rushes toward an unknown peril simply to satisfy a desire for excitement is a fool.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He was one of those scientist-artists who comes along every few centuries to justify the existence of that overworked word “genius.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are circumstances under which the anomalous should be courted. Ignorance is one of them.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I had no doubts as to the correctness of my own beliefs, that human nature could be altered, that man could be forced to evolve morally.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“After signing it, he added the postscript: By the time you read this, you will already be dead.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“...And I have seen stranger things in a long and colorful career.” “Exactly. So what is the problem in believing my story?” “You’ve nothing to back it up with. Even if you’re right, I’m still right in not believing without evidence.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Never trust a cat, anyway. All they’re good for is stringing tennis racquets.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I thought about the Elder Gods and wondered at how they might change things if the way were opened for their return. The world could be a good place or a nasty place without supernatural intervention; we had worked out our own way of doing things, defined our own goods and evils. Some gods were great for individual ideals to be aimed at, rather than actual ends to be sought, here and now. As for the Elders, I could see no profit in intercourse with those who transcend utterly. I like to keep all such things in abstract, Platonic realms and not have to concern myself with physical presences.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is a city of neat cottages and cobbled streets where wander cats without number, for the enlightened legislators of long ago laid down laws for our protection. A good, kind village, where travelers take their ease and pet the cats, making much of them, which is as it should be.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When you talk about being an ‘anticipator,’ of having a pretty good idea of when something’s going to happen—or how, or who will be there—isn’t that a kind of divination?” “No. I think it’s more a kind of subconscious knack for dealing with statistics, against a fairly well-known field of actions.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My favorite form is the short story. From an aesthetics stand point you really have to pare down to the bone. You can't write a throw-away scene.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Yeah, the mythology is kind of a pattern. I'm very taken by mythology. I read it at a very early age and kept on reading it. Before I discovered science fiction I was reading mythology. And from that I got interested in comparative religion and folklore and related subjects. And when I began writing, it was just a fertile area I could use in my stories. I was saying at the convention in Melbourne that after a time I got typed as a writer of mythological science fiction, and at a convention I'd go to I'd invariably wind up on a panel with the title "Mythology and Science Fiction". I felt a little badly about this, I was getting considered as exclusively that sort of writer. So I intentionally tried to break away from it with things like Doorways in the Sand and those detective stories which came out in the book My Name Is Legion, and other things where I tried to keep the science more central. But I do find the mythological things are creeping in. I worked out a book which I thought was just straight science fiction -- with everything pretty much explained, and suddenly I got an idea which I thought was kind of neat for working in a mythological angle. I'm really struggling with myself. It would probably be a better book if I include it, but on the other hand I don't always like to keep reverting to it. 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.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) first seen 1978 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Conversation With Roger Zelazny" (8 April 1978), talking with Terry Dowling and Keith Curtis in Science Fiction Vol. 1, #2 (June 1978)
“I thought back over my life. How does a man come to climb mountains? Is he drawn by the heights because he is afraid of the level land? Is he such a misfit in the society of men that he must flee and try to place himself above it? The way up is long and difficult, but if he succeeds they must grant him a garland of sorts. And if he falls, this too is a kind of glory. To end, hurled from the heights to the depths in hideous ruin and combustion down, is a fitting climax for the loser—for it, too, shakes mountains and minds, stirs things like thoughts below both, is a kind of blasted garland of victory in defeat, and cold, so cold that final action, that the movement is somewhere frozen forever into a statuelike rigidity of ultimate intent and purpose thwarted only by the universal malevolence we all fear exists. An aspirant saint or hero who lacks some necessary virtue may still qualify as a martyr, for the only thing that people will really remember in the end is the end.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People haven’t changed. They are as rational—and irrational—as they were in the old days. They are as moral and law-abiding—and not—as ever. Many new things have been learned, many new situations evolved, but I do not believe that the nature of man has altered significantly in the time you’ve slept. Nothing you do is going to change that. You may be able to alter a few features of the times, but would it really be proper to meddle? Everything is so interdependent today that even you would not be able to predict all the consequences of any actions you take. You might do more harm than good; and whatever you do, man’s nature will remain the same.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“True epics of course are few and historically well spaced, but that slightly more mundane ingredient, the speculative impulse, be it of Classic, Christian or Renaissance shading, which ornamented Western literature with romances, fables, exotic voyages and utopias, seemed to me basically the same turn of fancy exercised today in science fiction, working then with the only objects available to it. It took the Enlightenment, it took science, it took the industrial revolution to provide new sources of idea that, pushed, poked, inverted and rotated through higher spaces, resulted in science fiction. When the biggest, the most interesting ideas began emerging from science, rather than from theology or the exploration of new lands, hindsight makes it seem logical that something like science fiction had to be delivered.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Hellenic world did not view the passage of time as we do. History was considered in an episodic sense, as the struggles of an unchanging mankind against a relentless and unchanging fate. The slow process of organic evolution had not yet been detected, and the grandest model for a world view was the seeming changeless patterning of the stars. It took the same processes that set the stage for science fiction—eighteenth-century rationalism and nineteenth-century science—to provide for the first time in the history of the world a sense of historical direction, of time as a developmental, nonrepetitive sequence. This particular world view became a part of science fiction in a far more explicit fashion than in any other body of storytelling, as it provided the basis for its favorite exercise: extrapolation. I feel that because of this, science fiction is the form of literature least affected by Aristotle’s dicta with respect to the nature of the human condition, which he saw as immutable, and the nature of man’s fate, which he saw as inevitable.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I sank Atlantis,” he said, “personally. “It was about three years ago. And God! it was lovely! It was all ivory towers and golden minarets and silver balconies. There were bridges of opal, and crimson pennants and a milk-white river flowing between lemon-colored banks. There were jade steeples, and trees as old as the world tickling the bellies of clouds, and ships in the great sea-harbor of Xanadu, as delicately constructed as musical instruments, all swaying with the tides. The twelve princes of the realm held court in the dozen-pillared Coliseum of the Zodiac, to listen to a Greek tenor sax play at sunset.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The fact remains that you would be dealing, and dealing constantly, with the abnormal. The power of a neurosis is unimaginable to ninety-nine point et cetera percent of the population, because we can never adequately judge the intensity of our own — let alone those of others, when we only see them from the outside. That is why no neuroparticipant will ever undertake to treat a fullblown psychotic. The few pioneers in that area are all themselves in therapy today. It would be like driving into a maelstrom. If the therapist loses the upper hand in an intense session he becomes the Shaped rather than the Shaper. The synapses respond like a fission reaction when nervous impulses are artificially augmented. The transference effect is almost instantaneous.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Some worlds have too much life,“ he says. “Life—crawling, pullulating, fecundating, smothering itself—worlds too clement, too full of the sciences which keep men alive—worlds which would drown themselves in their own semen, worlds which would pack all of their lands with crowds of big-bellied women—and so go down to death beneath the weight of their own fruitfulness. Then there are worlds which are bleak and barren and bitter, worlds which grind life like grain. Even with body modifications and with world-change machines, there are only a few hundred worlds which may be inhabited by the six intelligent races. Life is badly needed in the worst of these. It can be a deadly blessing on the best. When I say that life is needed or not needed in certain places, I am of course also saying that death is needed or not needed. I am not speaking of two different things, but of the same thing. Osiris and I are bookkeepers. We credit and we debit. We raise waves, or we cause waves to sink back again into the ocean. Can life be counted upon to limit itself? No. It is the mindless striving of two to become infinity. Can death be counted on to limit itself? Never. It is the equally mindless effort of zero to encompass infinity.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything you may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness. Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to insure any possible benefit for which you may be eligible after the destruction of your body, I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure your receiving said benefit. I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“At one time, tips were given only for things you logically would want to have done efficiently and promptly, and they served to supplement a lower payscale for certain classes of employment. This was understood, accepted. It was tourism, back in the century of my birth, cluing in the underdeveloped countries to the fact that all tourists are marks, that set the precedent, which then spread to all countries, even back to the tourists’ own, of the benefits which might be gained by those who wear uniforms and render the undesired and the unrequested with a smile. This is the army that conquered the world. After their quiet revolution in the twentieth century, we all became tourists the minute we set foot outside our front doors, second-class citizens, to be ruthlessly exploited by the smiling legions who had taken over, slyly, completely.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For me, I have seen worlds and people begin and end, actually and metaphorically, and it will always be the same. It’s always fire and water. No matter what your scientific background, emotionally you’re an alchemist. You live in a world of liquids, solids, gases and heat-transfer effects that accompany their changes of state. These are the things you perceive, the things you feel. Whatever you know about their true natures is rafted on top of that. So, when it comes to the day-to-day sensations of living, from mixing a cup of coffee to flying a kite, you treat with the four ideal elements of the old philosophers: earth, air, fire, water. Let’s face it, air isn’t very glamorous, no matter how you look at it. I mean, I’d hate to be without it, but it’s invisible and so long as it behaves itself it can be taken for granted and pretty much ignored. Earth? The trouble with earth is that it endures. Solid objects tend to persist with a monotonous regularity. Not so fire and water, however. They’re formless, colorful, and they’re always doing something. While suggesting you repent, prophets very seldom predict the wrath of the gods in terms of landslides and hurricanes. No. Floods and fires are what you get for the rottenness of your ways. Primitive man was really on his way when he learned to kindle the one and had enough of the other nearby to put it out. It is coincidence that we’ve filled hells with fires and oceans with monsters? I don’t think so. Both principles are mobile, which is generally a sign of life. Both are mysterious and possess the power to hurt or kill. It is no wonder that intelligent creatures the universe over have reacted to them in a similar fashion. It is the alchemical response.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Within the theater Agony on the stage of Delirium in the heat-lightning lit landscape of Night and Dream there go upon the boards the memories that never were, compounded of that which was and that which is not, that which is and that which can never be, informed with fleeting or lingering passions, sexless or sexful, profound or absurd, seldom remembered, sometimes coherent, beautiful, ugly, or mundane upon experience, generally inane in reflection, strangely sad or happy, colorfully dark or darkly light, and this is about all that can be said of them, save that the spark which ignites them, too, is unknown.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“From the shape of a cloud I know that a man in a distant city will quarrel with his wife three seasons hence and a murderer will be hanged before I finish speaking. From the falling of a stone I know the number of maidens being seduced and the movements of icebergs on the other side of the world. From the texture of the wind I know where next the lightning will fall. So long have I watched and so much am I part of all things, that nothing is hidden from me.” “You know where I go?” “Yes.” “And what I would do there?” “I know that, too.” “Then tell me if you know, will I succeed in that which I desire?” “You will succeed in that which you are about, but by then it may not be what you desire.” “I do not understand you, Morningstar.” “I know that, too. But that is the way it is with all oracles, Jack. When that which is foreseen comes to pass, the inquirer is no longer the same person he was when he posed the question. It is impossible to make a man understand what he will become with the passage of time; and it is only a future self to whom a prophecy is truly relevant.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Well, I decided that as a teenager that I really didn't know enough to describe character well and I was wasting my time. I'd learned as much as I could about story telling techniques and it wasn't a matter of technique any more. It was a matter of substance. As a result I said I was going to wait until I was a lot older and had more experience. So it was that after I got out of college I'd been away from SF for about four years. I'd read SF steadily from when I was eleven until I started college. When I started college I said, "I'm not going to read that while I'm here, I'm going to learn poetry and other things of that sort" in fact I wrote a lot of poetry then.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'd had a long talk with Bob Silverberg, who was very influential on my early career. He'd, out of the kindness of his heart, at a convention told me that he thought I'd made several mistakes in the way I was disposing of my stories. And I said, "I don't understand what you mean, but I'll be glad to buy you a few drinks, if you'll tell me about it". So we adjourned to the bar and sat there a couple of hours. He was drinking Bloody Marys back then; I was drinking Black Russians. And he told me all sorts of things which carried me over the next several years; it was a lot of information for a couple of drinks. He told me that the first thing I should do if I wanted to write full-time was to get a really good agent. He said that after a while the business end of writing takes too much of the writing time. Better to pay someone ten percent and find that you're still more than ten percent ahead in the end. Which is true. My present agent says that he always feels that a good agent during the course of a year should earn back for his client at least the ten percent he takes by way of commission, so the client's really nothing out. And what he should ideally do is make him more money than the ten percent.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I try to write every day. I used to try to write four times a day, minimum of three sentences each time. It doesn't sound like much but it's kinda like the hare and the tortoise. If you try that several times a day you're going to do more than three sentences, one of them is going to catch on. You're going to say "Oh boy!" and then you just write. You fill up the page and the next page. But you have a certain minimum so that at the end of the day, you can say "Hey I wrote four times today, three sentences, a dozen sentences. Each sentence is maybe twenty word long. That's 240 words which is a page of copy, so at least I didn't goof off completely today. I got a page for my efforts and tomorrow it might be easier because I've moved as far as I have".”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When I started writing my first novel, ...And Call Me Conrad, they always say: "Write about what you know" and I said "Well, if I get a nice sort of combination SF and Fantasy with these resonances from Greek Mythology it might be pretty good. It would also give me a chance to start filling in my background on all those things I don't know much about but should if I want to be an SF writer." So I sat down and made a list of everything I felt I should know more about. Astrophysics, oceanography, marine biology, genetics... Then when I'd finished the list I read one book in each of these areas. When I'd finished I went back and read a second book until I'd read ten books in each area. I thought that it wouldn't turn me into a terrific, fantastic expert but I'd at least have enough material there to know if I was saying something wrong. And I'd also know where to turn to get the information I want to make it right. While I was doing this, to keep the words and cheques flowing I wrote books involving mythology. And once I started picking up things involving astrophysics I'd write stories that played with those sorts of things. So that's why I started out with mythology.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source