Roger Zelazny Quotes

#1. Many of my better short stories are just the last chapters of novels I did not write. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#2. Even the most heartening of philosophical vistas is no match for, say, a toothache, if it happens to be your own. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#3. I would never rest until I held vengeance and the throne within my hand, and good night sweet prince to anybody who stood between me and these things. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#4. The stars blazed like the love of God, cold and distant. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#5. I saw my earlier selves as different people, acquaintances I had outgrown. I wondered how I could ever have been some of them. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#6. You leap too quickly to his defense. It reveals his true attitude, of which he has doubtless made you aware. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#7. But I recall the springtime of the world as though it were yesterday - those days when we rode together to battle, and those nights when we shook the stars loose from the fresh-painted skies! - Author: Roger Zelazny

#8. You are a deviant from the social norm!"
"Is that an insult or a diagnosis? - Author: Roger Zelazny

#9. Life is full of doors that don't open when you knock, equally spaced amid those that open when don't want them to. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#10. The dead are too much with us. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#11. A powerful flight of the imagination ... an entirely enjoyable reading experience, wrought by a pair of writers noted for excellence. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#12. P.S. I still dunno if it's art. Go to Hell yourself. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#13. It is a pain in the ass waiting around for someone to try to kill you. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#14. Two days like icebergs bleak, blank, half-melting, all frigid, mainly out of sight, and definitely a threat to peace of mind drifted by and were good to put behind. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#15. If a building is falling on you, you don't concern yourself with the horn of an approaching car. You deal with the most immediate peril first. That's survival. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#16. When your bow is broken and your last arrow spent, then shoot, shoot
with your whole heart. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#17. There are stars, stars, scattered stars, blackness all between. They ripple and fold and bend, and they rush toward him, rush by him. Their colors are blazing and pure as angels' eyes. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#18. There is Shadow and there is Substance, and this is the root of all things. Of Substance, there is only Amber, the real city, upon the real Earth, which contains everything. Of Shadow, there is an infinitude of things. Every possibility exists somewhere as a Shadow of the real. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#19. At the end of the season of sorrows comes the time of rejoicing. Spring, like a well-oiled clock, noiselessly indicates this time. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#20. Death and Light are everywhere, always, and they begin, end, strive, attend, into and upon the Dream of the Nameless that is the world, burning words within Samsara, perhaps to create a thing of beauty. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#21. To paraphrase Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear, and all those guys, I wish I had known this some time ago. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#22. How can you treat death so lightly?" she asks.
"Because it happens," he replies. "It is inevitable. I do not mourn the falling of a leaf or the breaking of a wave. I do not sorrow for a shooting star as it burns itself up in the atmosphere. Why should I? - Author: Roger Zelazny

#23. The columns of mounted men moved forward, passed out through the gates of the Palace of Karma, turned off the roadway and headed up the slope that lay to the southeast of the city of Mahartha, comrades blazing like the dawn at their back. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#24. I see myself as a novelist, period. I mean, the material I work with is what is classified as science fiction and fantasy, and I really don't think about these things when I'm writing. I'm just thinking about telling a story and developing my characters. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#25. 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. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#26. It was my turn to be silent while a small family of moments crossed my path, single file, from the left, sticking their tongues out at me. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#27. In the State of Denmark there was the odor of decay ... - Author: Roger Zelazny

#28. If the liberal arts do nothing else, they provide engaging metaphors for the thinking they displace. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#29. I believe everything I say, though I know I'm a liar. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#30. I'm a lost soul. We do wail. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#31. The enemy of the moment is not as important as our own inner weakness. If this is not mended we are already defeated, though no foreign conqueror stands within our walls. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#32. Which one is the right way?"
"Huh? You're asking me that? How should I know?"
"Mortals call you Buddha."
"That is only because they are afflicted with language and ignorance. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#33. There are none of you, good doctors, could cope with my family anyway. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#34. While it shows the gods as no better than the rest of us," she said, "at least, it shows them as no worse. See here the sources of human morality. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#35. His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god, but then he never claimed not to be a god. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#36. The headwaters of Shit Creek are a cruel and treacherous expanse. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#37. Wishes, wishes.
Wish in one hand and do something else in the other, and squeeze them both and see which comes true - Author: Roger Zelazny

#38. Good-bye and hello, as always. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#39. Then the fit hit the Shan. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#40. One of the disadvantages of traveling alone is that when you fall there is none to assist you. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#41. It is anticipation and recollection that fill the heart - never the sensation of the moment. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#42. I have decided, it is fruitless. For I am no longer sure of anything concerning my existance. A philosopher is a dead poet and a dying theologian. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#43. Once a Buddha, always a Buddha. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#44. Nothing is cheaper than past glories. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#45. I have no objection to the expression of political opinions in SF if they are an integral part of the story structure. I don't at all appreciate their intrusion for the purpose of converting a story into a political tract, because I consider that intellectually insulting. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#46. The Keeper of Clouds has unpenned his charges.
The Keeper of Winds has unlocked his gates.
The Keeper of Waters has opened the sky.
The Keeper of Lightnings waves his lances.
The Keeper of satellites has observed,
'One hundred percent of probability of precipitation. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#47. An army, great in space, may offer opposition in a brief span of time. One man, brief in space, must spread his opposition across a period of many years if he is to have a chance of succeeding. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#48. I know, too, that death is the only god who comes when you call. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#49. The day of battle dawned pink as the fresh-bitten thigh of a maiden. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#50. And again, damn. Of troubles I considered myself amply possessed. But those who do seem to get. Some spiritual form of compound interest, I suppose. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#51. Two versions of the same face looking into blank screens, two very different minds thinking of things unsaid. Sometimes love is in silence. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#52. I'm very gullible when it comes to my own words. I believe everything I say, though I know I am a liar. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#53. If I get enough letters saying you never explained this or that, I suppose I'll have to write another book. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#54. What an enormous chutzpah you possess," I told him. "What makes you better than the rest of us, and more fit to rule?" "The fact that I was able to occupy the throne," he replied. "Try and take it. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#55. I enjoy slaughtering beasts, and I think of my relatives constantly. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#56. He spent the last second of his life screaming, as the force of Bortan's leap pulped him against the ground, before his head was snatched from his shoulders.
My hellhound had arrived. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#57. The power to hurt ... has evolved in a direct relationship to technological advancement. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#58. When you are about to die, a wombat is better than no company at all. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#59. 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. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#60. I don't know that I ever wanted greatness on its own. It seems rather like wanting to be an engineer, rather than wanting to design something - or wanting to be a writer, rather than wanting to write. It should be a by-product, not a thing in itself. Otherwise, it's just an ego trip. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#61. Nobody steals books but your friends. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#62. Hell, we make our own ifs. I had better things to think about than what could have happened - Author: Roger Zelazny

#63. Trouble can be purchased cheaply, though the refund may be more than you can bear. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#64. Time passed slowly, like and old man climbing a hill. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#65. Any man would be forsworn to gain a kingdom. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#66. I never plan ahead, with the exception of the Amber books which had to proceed in sequence. But I don't really like to know what I'm going to be working on a year in advance. So I just sign blank contracts for books and whatever strikes me as a good idea is what I write about. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#67. Sleep is perhaps the only among life's great pleasures which need not be of short duration. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#68. I wonder as to the value of consciousness," said Jack, "if it does not change the nature of a beast. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#69. Thus did I bear Sir Lancelot de Lac to the Keep of Ganleon, whom I trusted like a brother. That is to say, not at all. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#70. We fought.'
'A duel?'
'Nothing that formal. A simultaneous decision to murder one another is more like it. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#71. Strygalldwir is my name. Conjure with it and I will eat your heart and liver."
"Conjure with it? I can't even pronounce it, and my cirrhosis would give you indigestion. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#72. Only friends steal books. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#73. Vishnu Vishnu Vishnu regarded regarded regarded Brahma Brahma Brahma ...
They sat in the Hall of Mirrors. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#74. So I simply said one of the great trite truths: There is generally more than one side to a story. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#75. I try to sit down at the typewriter four times a day, even if it's only five minutes, and write three sentences. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#76. The universe did not invent justice. Man did. Unfortunately, man must reside in the universe. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#77. First, a man may in some ways be superior to his fellows and still serve them, if together they serve a common cause which is greater than any one man. I believe that I serve such a cause, or I would not be doing it. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#78. I have always found that hell is other people. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#79. Be warned, therefore, that one does not go to hell to light a cigarette. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#80. Blood!" I called out.
Give me blood and vengeance this day, my warriors, and you will be remembered in Amber forever!"
And as a man. they raised their weapons and cried out, "Blood! - Author: Roger Zelazny

#81. I loved him like a brother - which is to say, not at all. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#82. We crossed a small but sturdy wooden bridge a little later, but no trolls were taking tolls. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#83. Tonight I will suck the marrow from your bones!" it said. "I will dry them and work them most cunningly into instruments of music! Whenever I play upon them, your spirit will writhe in bodiless agony!"
"You burn prettily," I said. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#84. Besides, I like libraries. It makes me feel comfortable and secure to have walls of words, beautiful and wise, all around me. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#85. Amber casts an infinity of shadows, and my Avalon had cast many of its own, because of my presence there. I might be known on many earths that I had never trod, for shadows of myself had walked them, mimicking imperfectly my deeds and my thoughts. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#86. Unlike the other darkside Lords, whose places of power were fixed geographical localities where they reigned supreme, Jack's was more a tenuous one, and liable to speedy cancellation, but it existed wherever light and objects met to make a lesser darkness. With - Author: Roger Zelazny

#87. Once a Buddha, always a Buddha, Sam. Dust off some of your old parables. You have about fifteen minutes.'
Sam held out his hand. Give me some tobacco and a paper. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#88. To waste! You are unknown and unwanted, save by me. This, because you are fairly adept at the various embalming arts and you occasionally compose a clever epitaph. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#89. Most people who daydream of transforming themselves into some vicious beast and going about tearing people's throats out, dismembering them, disfiguring them and perhaps devouring them tend mainly to dwell upon how much fun it would be and generally neglect the practicalities of the situation. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#90. Siddhartha considered the ways of the demon, and in that moment he struck. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#91. We talked the moon out of heavens before either of us grew tired. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#92. All roads lead to Amber, he said, as though it were an axiom. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#93. It would be nice if there were some one thing constant and unchanging in the universe. If there is such a thing, then it is a thing which would have to be stronger than love, and it is a thing which I do not know. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#94. Of course it does not apply to me. I am the soul of honor, kindness, mercy and goodness. Trust me in all things. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#95. If someone asks you why you're oppressing a world and you reply with a lot of poetic crap, no. I guess there can't be a meeting of minds. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#96. Wheels turning, the motorcycle's roar grows steady, which, too, is a form of silence. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#97. Between the black of yesterday and the white of tomorrow is the great gray of today. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#98. And sweets to the sweet, I replied, then spoke the word that completed the spell, dropping a load of manure upon him. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#99. Why could you not have left me as I was, in the sea of being?"
"Because the world has need of your humility, your piety, your great teaching and your Machiavellian scheming. - Author: Roger Zelazny

#100. It is no shame to lose to me, mortal. Even among mythical creatures there are very few who can give a unicorn a good game. - Author: Roger Zelazny