Jack Vance

John Holbrook Vance (born August 28, 1916) is an award-winning science fiction and fantasy author, who wrote the four-book Dying Earth series.

Sourced

• Man had dominated the Earth by virtue of a single assumption: that an effect could be traced to a cause, itself the effect of a previous cause. Manipulation of this basic law yielded rich results; there seemed no need for any other tool or instrumentality. Man congratulated himself on his generalized structure. He could live on desert, on plain or ice, in forest or in city; Nature had not shaped him to a special environment.

  He was unaware of his vulnerability. Logic was the special environment; the brain was the special tool.

  • "The Men Return", Infinity Science Fiction, July 1957

• The less a writer discusses his work—and himself—the better. The master chef slaughters no chickens in the dining room; the doctor writes prescriptions in Latin; the magician hides his hinges, mirrors, and trapdoors with the utmost care.
  • Afterword to "The Bagful of Dreams" in The Jack Vance Treasury (2007). First appeared in Epoch (1775), ed. Robert Silverberg and Roger Elwood.

The Five Gold Bands (1950)

All page numbers from the 1980 mass market paperback edition published by Daw

• I'm only giving orders because I'm more efficient and smarter than you are.
  • Chapter 5 (p. 57)

• Damned meddlers. It’s hard to know when their curiosity is official and when it’s just curiosity.
  • Chapter 6 (p. 65)

• “Down we go,” said Paddy. “Now pray to Saint Anthony if you be a good Catholic—”
  “I'm not,” snapped Fay, “and if you'll give more mind to the boat and less to religion we’ll gain by it.”
  • Chapter 11 (p. 131)

To Live Forever (1956)

• He must approach the subject critically, alert for contradictions, pedantry and vagueness.
  • Chapter V, section 2

• He’s like an imbecile with a pepper shaker; a little makes his food taste good, therefore a lot will make it wonderful.
  • Chapter VII, section 1

• Another busy day! So let’s to business. The clock moves forward; wasted time is life defeated!
  • Chapter VIII, section 3

• The void is a mouth crying to be filled, a blank mind aching for thought, a cavity desperate for shape. What is not implies what is.
  • Chapter XI, section 1

• “The crime,” said the Jacynth softly, “is abstract and fundamental: the innate depravity of extinguishing life.”
  • Chapter XI, section 2

• “It is simple dog-eat-dog,” said Waylock. It’s basic battle for survival, fiercer and more brutal than ever before in the history of man. You have blinded yourself; you subscribe to false theories; you are permeated with your obsession—not only you but all of us. If we faced the facts of existence, our palliatories would be less crowded.”
  • Chapter XI, section 2

• The history of man is a compendium of such evil. We are an evolutionary product, descendants of predators. A few synthetic foods aside, every morsel eaten by man is taken from another living thing. We are intended for murder; we kill to exist!
  • Chapter XII, section 4

• A man is like a rope: both break at a definite strain....The solution is not splicing the rope; it’s lessening the tension.
  • Chapter XVI, section 3

Big Planet (1957)

All page numbers from the 2000 trade paperback edition published by Victor Gollancz

Note that the year of publication is complex; the novel was first published in 1952 in a magazine, then in an abridged version in 1957, and then as the full-length book in 1978

• A barbarian is not aware that he is a barbarian.
  • Chapter 3 “Free for All” (p. 31)

• Now was the present, now was the time containing that sweet union of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, spirit, will and imagination named Nancy.
  • Chapter 8 “A Matter of Vitamins” (p. 80)

• The merchant voiced an inarticulate protest. Glystra glared at him, “Do you think I trust you?”
  “Trust?” said the merchant with a puzzled expression. “Trust? What word is that?” And he tested it several times more.
  • Chapter 16 “The Search” (p. 167)

The Languages of Pao (1958)

All page numbers from the 2004 trade paperback edition published by iBooks

• Speaking our language, you will understand us—and if you can think as another man thinks, you cannot dislike him.
  • Chapter 8 (p. 64)

• “Truth” is contained in the preconceptions of him who seeks to define it. Any organization of ideas whatever presupposes a judgment on the world.
  • Chapter 11 (p. 112)

• “I learned a great deal,” said Beran. “And then I lost all heart for further learning.”
  Palafox’s eyes glinted. “Education is not achieved through the heart—it is a systematization of the mental processes.”
  “But I am something other than a mental process,” said Beran. “I am a man. I must reckon with the whole of myself.”
  • Chapter 13 (p. 133)

• There are no absolute certainties in this universe. A man must try to whip order into a yelping pack of probabilities, and uniform success is impossible.
  • Chapter 13 (p. 133)

• Your thoughts move with the deft precision of worm-tracks in the mud.
  • Chapter 14 (p. 149)

• When you demand the nature of my motives, you reveal the style of your thinking to be callow, captious, superficial, craven, uncertain and impudent.
  • Chapter 14 (p. 149)

The Dragon Masters (1962)

Novella which won the Hugo award

• “You will understand,” said the Weaponeer, “that a pattern for events exists. It is the function of such as myself to shape events so that they will fit the pattern.” He bent, with a graceful sweep of arm, and seized a small jagged pebble. “Just as I can grind this bit of rock to fit a round aperture.”
  Kergan Banbeck reached forward, took the pebble, tossed it high over the tumbled boulders. “That bit of rock you shall never shape to fit a round hole.”
  The Weaponeer shook his head in mild deprecation. “There is always more rock.”
  “And there are always more holes,” declared Kergan Banbeck.
  • Section 2

• Kergan Banbeck threw up his hands, turned once more to the sacerdote. “How can I halt his nonsense? How can I make him see reason?
  The sacerdote reflected. “He speaks not nonsense, but rather a language you fail to understand. You can make him understand your language by erasing all knowledge and training from his mind, and replacing it with patterns of your own.”
  • Section 2

• Since we are not permitted to act, we are obliged to know.
  • Section 6

• “It sees that you are wrong, that you are guided by faith indeed.”
  The Demie fell silent. His face seemed to stiffen.
  “Are these not facts?” asked Joaz. “How do you reconcile them with your faith?
  “The Demie said mildly, “Facts can never be reconciled with faith.”
  • Section 7

• If there were no such creatures as minstrel-maidens, it would be necessary to invent them.
  • Section 7

• How to know, oh how to know! All is relative ease and facility in orthodoxy, yet how can it be denied that good is in itself undeniable? Absolutes are the most uncertain of all formulations, while the uncertainties are the most real...
  • Section 7

Space Opera (1965)

All page numbers from the first edition, published by Pyramid Books

• Music is like a language: you cannot understand it unless you learn it, or more accurately, are born into it.
  • Chapter 1 (p. 12)

• Roger tried to find out all about her: he wanted, in one brief hour, to make up for a lifetime of non-acquaintance, a lifetime for all practical purposes wasted.
  • Chapter 4 (p. 30)

• He was neither lazy nor incompetent; he merely had occupational claustrophobia.
  • Chapter 4 (p. 30)

• We are sufficiently at the mercy of machines, Roger; if our music must necessarily be mechanical, then it is time for us to throw in the sponge, and abandon all hope for the future of humanity.
  • Chapter 4 (p. 31)

• And I understand they are, in a sense, artists? That is to say, they understand the creative process, the sublimation of fact to symbol and the use of symbol to suggest emotion?
  • Chapter 8 (p. 65)

• “I'm sure you didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”
  Madoc Roswyn laughed a soft forlorn laugh. “The sad truth is that I didn’t care—which may be worse.”
  • Chapter 12 (p. 127)

• He looked around the landscape. Drenched in the golden haze of late afternoon it seemed wonderfully tranquil and beautiful, though permeated with a sense of remoteness and even melancholy, like a scene remembered from one’s youth.
  • Chapter 13 (p. 130)

• “Now it seems that Roger has once more taken up with Miss Roswyn. I can’t say that I approve, but he has not troubled to ask my advice.” She heaved a sigh. “But I am sure that the world will never go precisely to my liking.”
  “Does it for anyone?” asked Bernard Bickel with good-natured cynicism.
  “Probably not, and I must reconcile myself to the fact.”
  • Chapter 13 (p. 134)

The Last Castle (1966)

Novella which won the Hugo and the Nebula awards

• In the end, death came uniformly to all, and all extracted as much satisfaction from their dying as this essentially graceless process could afford.
  • Chapter 1, section 1

• The life we’ve been leading couldn’t last forever. It’s a wonder it lasted as long as it did.
  • Chapter 2, section 1

• Claghorn had long insisted that no human condition endured forever, with the corollary that the more complicated such a condition, the greater its susceptibility to change.
  • Chapter 2, section 1

• I know that the history of man is not his technical triumphs, his kills, his victories. It is a composite, a mosaic of a trillion pieces, the account of each man’s accommodation with his conscience. This is the true history of the race.
  • Chapter 3, section 2

• You emphasize morality. But the ultimate basis of morality is survival. What promotes survival is good; what induces mortifaction is bad.
  • Chapter 3, section 2

Emphyrio (1969)

• Happiness is fugitive; dissatisfaction and boredom are real.
  • Chapter 5
• Freedom, privileges, options, must constantly be exercised, even at the risk of inconvenience. Otherwise they fall into desuetude and become unfashionable, unorthodox—finally irregulationary.
  • Chapter 9
• Ghyl laughed also. “If I'm too serious, you're too irresponsible.”
  “Bah,” retorted Floriel. “Is the world responsible? Of course not! The world is random, vagrant, heedless. To be responsible is to be out of phase, to be insane!”
  Ghyl pondered a moment. “This is perhaps the case, in a world left to itself. But society imposes order. Living in a society, it is not insane to be responsible.”
  • Chapter 11
• Control is necessary and even good—so long as I do the controlling.
  • Chapter 11
• “Tomorrow?”
  “Sh.” She put her hand across his lips. “Never say the word!”
  • Chapter 12
• Shanne said, “You are quiet; are you sad?”
  “In a way. Do you know why?”
  She put her hand across his mouth. “Never speak of it. What must be, will be. What can never be—can never be.”
  Ghyl turned to look at her, trying to divine every last scintilla of her meaning.
  “But,” she added in a soft voice, “what can be—can be.”
  • Chapter 12
• IF THERE BE HERE LESSON OR MORAL, IT LIES BEYOND THE COMPETENCE OF HIM WHO INSCRIBES THIS RECORD.
  • Chapter 19
• What, given the circumstances, would have been Emphyrio’s course of action?
  Truth.
  Very well, thought Ghyl: it shall be Truth, and let the consequences fall where they may.
  • Chapter 22

Showboat World (1975)

All page numbers from the 1981 paperback edition, published by DAW Books

• The town’s lack of special quirks was almost a peculiarity in itself.
  • Chapter 3 (p. 23)

• Gassoon, for all his lore, subscribed to a common fallacy: he assumed that all those whom he encountered appraised him in the same terms as he did himself.
  • Chapter 7 (p. 81)

• Consider the human mind! It is capable of amazing feats when used properly. Conversely, without exercise it atrophies to a lump of gray-yellow fat.
  • Chapter 7 (p. 83)

• “Let him talk as he will!” scoffed Zamp. “His motives are not at all obscure.”
  • Chapter 10 (p. 108)

• I suspect that the word (art) was invented by second-rate intelligences to describe the incomprehensible activities of their betters.
  • Chapter 10 (p. 111)

• Your doctrines are remarkable! As if I existed only to fulfill your cravings! Then, since I do not care to do so, the cosmos must be considered insane.
  • Chapter 11 (p. 123)

• I fear, Master Zamp, that you are a victim to your own perfervid imagination.
  • Chapter 11 (p. 123)

• My fees are not too high. Your wage scale may simply be too low.
  • Chapter 12 (p. 132)

• Your character, Apollon Zamp, is marred by a certain paltriness of spirit, a diffused universal distrust which I truly deplore.
  • Chapter 13 (p. 151)

• “Navigation on this lake is forbidden to aliens,” he declared. “We are ordered to sink all intruding vessels. Prepare to drown.”
  • Chapter 14 (p. 162)

• “Let them scoff as they see fit! I will never compromise what I consider my art, especially for the sake of gain!”
  “For the sake of gain I’d compromise the art of my grandmother,” muttered Zamp under his breath.
  • Chapter 14 (p. 168)

Quotes and text from the Demon Princes novels

The Killing Machine

• 'Humanity is old, civilization is new: the mesh of cogs is by no means smooth and this is as it should be. Never should a man enter a building of glass or metal, or a spaceship, or a submarine, without a small shock of astonishment; never should he avoid an act of passion without a small sense of effort. We of the Institute receive an intensive historical inculcation; we know the men of the past, and we have projected dozens of possible future variations, which, without exception, are repulsive. Man, as he exists now, with all his faults and vices, a thousand gloriously irrational compromises between two thousand sterile absolutes is optimal. Or so it seems to us who are men.'
  • "Xaviar Skolcamp, Over-Centennial Fellow of the Institute" in The Killing Machine.

Quotes and text from the Dying Earth novels

The Dying Earth (1950)

• Mischief moves somewhere near and I must blast it with my magic!
  • Chapter 1, "Turjan of Miir"

• It had been suggested to her that the flaw lay not in the universe but in herself.
  • Chapter 3, "T'Sais"

• “You must save yourselves,” Rogol Domedonfors told them. “You have ignored the ancient wisdom, you have been too indolent to learn, you have sought easy complacence from religion, rather than facing manfully to the world.”
  • Chapter 5, "Ulan Dhor"

• "What are your fees?" inquired Guyal cautiously.
  "I respond to three questions," stated the augur. "For twenty terces I phrase the answer in clear and actionable language; for ten I use the language of cant, which occasionally admits of ambiguity; for five, I speak a parable which you must interpret as you will; and for one terce, I babble in an unknown tongue."
  • Chapter 6, "Guyal of Sfere"

• Guyal reined his horse and reflected that flowers were rarely cherished by persons of hostile disposition.
  • Chapter 6, "Guyal of Sfere"

• "My clever baton holds your unnatural sorcery in abeyance."
  • Chapter 6, "Guyal of Sfere"

• His brain ached with the want of knowing.
  • Chapter 6, "Guyal of Sfere"

The Eyes of the Overworld (1966)

• "Enter, my friend, enter. How goes your trade?"
  "In all candor, not too well," said Cugel. "I am both perplexed and disappointed, for my talismans are not obviously useless."
  • Chapter 1, "The Overworld"

• I do not care to listen; obloquy injures my self-esteem and I am skeptical of praise.
  • Chapter 1, "The Overworld"

• Yes, I realize that I see but a semblance, but so do you, and who is to say which is real?
  • Chapter 1, "The Overworld"

• Cease the bickering! I am indulging the exotic whims of a beautiful princess and must not be distracted.
  • Chapter 1, "The Overworld"

• "The contingency is remote." (This is also a Jeeves quote in the PG Wodehouse Novels)
  • Chapter 1, "The Overworld"

• Excellent; all is well. The 'everlasting tedium' exactly countervenes the 'immediate onset of death' and I am left only with the 'canker' which, in the person of Firx, already afflicts me. One must use his wits in dealing with maledictions.
  • Chapter 2, "Cil"

• And, stretching in languid warmth, she contrived to twist her body into first one luxurious position, then another.
  • Chapter 2, "Cil"

• I am not called Cugel the Clever for nothing.
  • Chapter 3, "The Mountains of Magnatz"

• Until work has reached its previous stage nympharium privileges are denied to all.
  • Chapter 4, "The Sorcerer Pharesm"

• The creature displayed the qualities reminiscent of both coelenterate and echinoderm. A terrene nudibranch? A mollusc deprived of its shell? More importantly, was the creature edible?
  • Chapter 4, "The Sorcerer Pharesm"

• Ah! Five hundred years I have toiled to entice this creature, despairing, doubting, brooding by night, yet never abandoning hope that my calculations were accurate and my great talisman cogent. Then, when finally it appears, you fall upon it for no other reason than to sate your repulsive gluttony!
  • Chapter 4, "The Sorcerer Pharesm"

• There can be no doubt as to the facts as I have stated them. Orthodoxy derives from this axiomatic foundation, and the two systems are mutually reinforcing: hence each is doubly validated.
  • Chapter 4, "The Sorcerer Pharesm"

• Notice this rent in my garment; I am at a loss to explain its presence! I am even more puzzled by the existence of the universe.
  • Chapter 5, "The Pilgrims"

• The purportedly free was seldom as represented.
  • Chapter 6, "The Cave in the Forest"

Cugel's Saga (1983)

• I challenge Destiny, yes, but I do not leap off cliffs.
  • Chapter 1, section 2, "The Inn of Blue Lamps"

• It was right and proper to exploit the excellences of the moment, but still, when conditions reached an apex, there was nowhere to go but down.
  • Chapter 2, section 3, "The Ocean of Sighs"

• “Is this the conduct of a ‘sly and unpredictable villain’?”
  “Decidedly so, if the villain, for the purposes of his joke, thinks to simulate the altruist.”
  “Then how will you know villain from altruist?”
  Cugel shrugged. “It is not an important distinction.”
  • Chapter 3, section 2, "Faucelme"

• “I was trained in the old tradition! We found our strength in the basic verities, to which you, as a patrician, must surely subscribe. Am I right in this?”
  “Absolutely, and in all respects!” declared Cugel. “Recognizing, of course, that these fundamental verities vary from region to region, and even from person to person.”
  • Chapter 3, section 2, "Faucelme"

• “I think that I will not answer that question,” he said at last. “I would create as many false images as there were ears to hear me.”
  “Half as many,” Clissum pointed out delicately.
  • Chapter 4, section 2, "The Caravan"

• "At Gundar we conceive 'innocence' as a positive quality, not merely an insipid absence of guilt," stated the Nolde. "We are not the fools that certain untidy ruffians might suppose."
  • Chapter 5, section 1, "The Seventeen Virgins"

• An inch of foreknowledge is worth ten miles of after-thought.
  • Chapter 5, section 2, "The Bagful of Dreams"

• "The folk are peculiar in many ways," said Erwig. "They preen themselves upon the gentility of their habits, yet they refuse to whitewash their hair, and they are slack in their religious observances. For instance, they make obeisance to Divine Wiulio with the right hand, not on the buttock, but on the abdomen, which we here consider a slipshod practice. What are your own views?"
  "The rite should be conducted as you describe," said Cugel. "No other method carries weight."
  Erwig refilled Cugel's glass. "I consider this an important endorsement of our views!"
  • Chapter 5, section 2, "The Bagful of Dreams"

• It is useless, after all, to complain against inexorable reality.
  • Chapter 5, section 2, "The Bagful of Dreams"

• I give dignity second place to expedience.
  • Chapter 6, section 1, "The Four Wizards"

Rhialto the Marvellous (1984)

• We need no chieftain; such folk eat more than their share.
  • "Fader's Waft", chapter 13

• Human interactions, stimulated as they are by disequilibrium, never achieve balance. In even the most favorable transaction, one party—whether he realizes it or not—must always come out the worse.
  • "Morreion" (first published in Flashing Swords #1, March 1973), chapter 4

• I must cite an intrinsic condition of the universe. We set forth in any direction which seems convenient; each leads to the same place: the end of the universe.
  • "Morreion", Ch. 6

• "A natural scientist, examining a single atom, might well be able to asserevate the structure and history of the entire universe!"

   :Bah!" muttered Hurtiancz. "By the same token, a sensible man need lisen to but a single word in order to recognize the whole for egregious nonsense."

  • "Morreion", Ch. 8

• Of all questions, why? is the least pertinent. It begs the question; it assumes the larger part of its own response; to wit, that a sensible response exists.
  • "Morreion", chapter 8

• Enough of this intolerable inanity! I propose that such loquacity passes beyond the scope of the nuisance and over the verge of turpitude.
  • "Morreion", chapter 8

(Quote to be located and placed appropriately)

• "All is mutability, and thus your three hundred terces has fluctuated to three."

Quotes and text from the Lyonesse Trilogy

The Green Pearl

• I also am of noble blood, or so it seems to me. — Orlo

• A notable scheme has occurred to me. — Orlo

• Naturally! That is the whole point of robbery: to acquire the victim's valuables! — Long Liam the Barber

• You have frightened and daunted me. I will stop stealing at once. — Dhrun

• It would not do if both of us became addled, and later woke up in doubt as to who was who. — Shimrod

• Dango, Pume, Thwither: down with Visbhume's breeches; let him hold his backside at the ready. — King Throbius

• Dismount and kneel before me, that I may strike off your head with fullest ease. You shall die in this tragic golden light of sunset. — Torqual

• He lives among the far moons of Achernar, and he is accustomed to the most extreme outrages of terror and the hourly proximity of death. — Murgen

• I am not a sensitive person, but these remarks carry a sting. — Sir Lulie

• Zaxa rode a small pacing wole, and carried his fabulous sword Zil, while the others of the party rode steeds of other descriptions

• Shimrod said: "Once I thought of you as a child in a woman's body." Melanchte smiled a cool smile. "And now?" "The child seems to have wandered away".

• "I have transcended that phase in my intellectual growth where I discover humour in simple freakishness. What exists is real; therefore it is tragic, since whatever lives must die. Only fantasy, the vapors rising from sheer nonsense, can now excite my laughter." - Lord Pirmence of Castle Lutez

Madouc

• Refrain (as sung by Mikelaus):

Sigmo chaska yi yi yi Varmous varmous oglethorpe.