Top 100 Zelazny's Quotes
#1. I would love to have written Roger Zelazny's first five books of 'Amber.' What a great idea he had about the shadings of reality!
Carol Berg
#2. Be warned, therefore, that one does not go to hell to light a cigarette.
Roger Zelazny
#3. That's life: trust and you're betrayed; don't trust and you betray yourself.
Roger Zelazny
#4. Did you ever look back at some moment in your past and have it suddenly grow so vivid that all the intervening years seemed brief, dreamlike, impersonal - the motions of a May afternoon surrendered to routine?
Roger Zelazny
#5. While sex heads a great number of lists, we all have other things we like to do in between.
Roger Zelazny
#6. Life goes different ways for different people. Some people's lives are formed by a cookie cutter and some are immediately tossed from the kitchen.
Trent Zelazny
#7. 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!
Roger Zelazny
#8. The trick with that would be allowing yourself transparency, rather than trying to be transparent.
Trent Zelazny
#9. I loved him like a brother - which is to say, not at all.
Roger Zelazny
#10. We crossed a small but sturdy wooden bridge a little later, but no trolls were taking tolls.
Roger Zelazny
#11. 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.
Roger Zelazny
#12. Besides, I like libraries. It makes me feel comfortable and secure to have walls of words, beautiful and wise, all around me.
Roger Zelazny
#13. 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.
Roger Zelazny
#14. You are a fool to speak of last great battles, Sam, for the last great battle is always the next one.
Roger Zelazny
#15. Time, too, is a function of Shadow, and even Dworkin did not know all of its ins and outs. Or perhaps he did. Maybe that is what drove him mad.
Roger Zelazny
#16. 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
Roger Zelazny
#17. The absence of a monument can, in its own way, be something of a monument also.
Roger Zelazny
#18. Personal feelings don't make for good politics, legal decisions, or business deals.
Roger Zelazny
#19. 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.
Roger Zelazny
#20. 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.
Roger Zelazny
#21. The universe did not invent justice. Man did. Unfortunately, man must reside in the universe.
Roger Zelazny
#22. Siddhartha considered the ways of the demon, and in that moment he struck.
Roger Zelazny
#23. We talked the moon out of heavens before either of us grew tired.
Roger Zelazny
#24. All roads lead to Amber, he said, as though it were an axiom.
Roger Zelazny
#25. 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.
Roger Zelazny
#26. Of course it does not apply to me. I am the soul of honor, kindness, mercy and goodness. Trust me in all things.
Roger Zelazny
#27. To paraphrase Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear, and all those guys, I wish I had known this some time ago.
Roger Zelazny
#28. You build desires, and as a result, rather than just being who and what you are, you create one, ten, hundreds of false egos, which in turn create more desires until there's no sense of self left anywhere in the jam-packed auditorium of schizophrenic nobodies.
Trent Zelazny
#30. There's no such thing as civilization. The word just means the art of living in cities.
Roger Zelazny
#31. Are you going to do it?" he asked. "Maybe," I said.
Don't 'maybe' me, baby. It's written all over you. I'd almost be willing to go along, you know. Of all my relations, I like sex the best and Eric the least."
I lit a cigarette, while I considered.
Roger Zelazny
#32. P.S. I still dunno if it's art. Go to Hell yourself.
Roger Zelazny
#33. 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.
Roger Zelazny
#34. Then you must reconcile yourself to the fact that something is always hurt by any change. If you do this, you will not be hurt yourself.
Roger Zelazny
#35. At the end of the season of sorrows comes the time of rejoicing. Spring, like a well-oiled clock, noiselessly indicates this time.
Roger Zelazny
#36. When I said I wanted to die in my sleep, I meant I wanted to be stepped on by an elephant while making love.
Roger Zelazny
#37. When inspiration is silent reason tires quickly.
Roger Zelazny
#38. Of all my relations, I like sex the best and Eric the least.
Roger Zelazny
#39. 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.
Roger Zelazny
#40. The function of criticism should not be confused with the function of reform.
Roger Zelazny
#41. 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?
Roger Zelazny
#42. There's really nothing quite like someone's wanting you dead to make you want to go on living.
Roger Zelazny
#43. Do you work for the government, any government?"
"I pay taxes, which means I work for the government, part of the time. Yes.
Roger Zelazny
#44. 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.
Roger Zelazny
#45. Mom and Dad were bibliophiles. Dad shared his father's love of westerns, Mom favored the likes of Zelazny and Heinlein, Howard and Burroughs. We owned several hundred books stored in trunks that comprised our portable library.
Laird Barron
#46. 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.
Roger Zelazny
#47. 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
#48. I fail to see what difference it makes whether it be supernatural or not
so long as it is malefic, possesses great powers and life span and has the ability to change its shape at will.
Roger Zelazny
#50. 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.
Roger Zelazny
#51. I have always found that hell is other people.
Roger Zelazny
#52. I wonder as to the value of consciousness," said Jack, "if it does not change the nature of a beast.
Roger Zelazny
#53. 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.
Roger Zelazny
#54. Pure poetry in motion. A swift-moving, heartfelt tale of love and loss, two stories intersecting-an d connecting-by magic. Michelle Baker is a born poet, and a born writer. The Canoe is just the start of what I hope to be a long idyllic journey through the love and soul of the human heart.
Trent Zelazny
#56. In a world of physical ease, brutal social equality, and reasonable economic equality, exclusiveness in frivolity becomes the most sought-after of all distinctions.
Roger Zelazny
#57. Hell, we make our own ifs. I had better things to think about than what could have happened
Roger Zelazny
#58. I'm you, Blake. I'm a reflection of you, a multi-dimensional reflection. It's easier to see a reflection of yourself than to see yourself in a reflection. It's an inward/outward thing.
Trent Zelazny
#59. Trouble can be purchased cheaply, though the refund may be more than you can bear.
Roger Zelazny
#60. Two versions of the same face looking into blank screens, two very different minds thinking of things unsaid. Sometimes love is in silence.
Roger Zelazny
#62. 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.
Roger Zelazny
#63. Once past the comfort zone in either direction, humans soon lost the ability to discriminate bad from worse.
Roger Zelazny
#64. Sleep is perhaps the only among life's great pleasures which need not be of short duration.
Roger Zelazny
#65. 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
#66. It was said that Dworkin himself had penned the Book in his saner days, and that long passages had come direct from the Unicorn. I don't know. I wasn't there. It is also said that we are descended of Dworkin and the Unicorn, which gives rise to some unusual mental images.
Roger Zelazny
#67. Read this book ... but understand it's fiction. And let life be ... your most important addiction.
John Zelazny
#68. 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.
Roger Zelazny
#69. We fought.'
'A duel?'
'Nothing that formal. A simultaneous decision to murder one another is more like it.
Roger Zelazny
#70. 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.
Roger Zelazny
#72. Vishnu Vishnu Vishnu regarded regarded regarded Brahma Brahma Brahma ...
They sat in the Hall of Mirrors.
Roger Zelazny
#73. So I simply said one of the great trite truths: There is generally more than one side to a story.
Roger Zelazny
#74. Let there be an end to thought. Thus do I refute Descartes.' I sprawled, not a cogito or a sum to my name.
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.
Roger Zelazny
#76. 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.
Roger Zelazny
#77. 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.
Roger Zelazny
#78. Wheels turning, the motorcycle's roar grows steady, which, too, is a form of silence.
Roger Zelazny
#79. It doesn't matter what you read. What matters is you read. Whether it's Tolstoy or Twilight, Kierkegaard or Betty and Veronica, keep reading, and don't ever let somebody else - anybody - have a say about, or try to control, what you choose to learn from and/or escape into.
Trent Zelazny
#80. Between the black of yesterday and the white of tomorrow is the great gray of today.
Roger Zelazny
#81. Your woman is gone and your heart is heavy. Words will not lighten the weight, and what is written is written. But let it also be put down that I grieve with you. ~Hasan~
Roger Zelazny
#82. And sweets to the sweet, I replied, then spoke the word that completed the spell, dropping a load of manure upon him.
Roger Zelazny
#83. What should I do?' Coyote yelled.
'Cultivate philosophy and run like hell,' said Bear ...
Roger Zelazny
#85. Don't wake me for the end of the world unless it has very good special effects.
Roger Zelazny
#86. No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words.
Roger Zelazny
#87. 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.
Roger Zelazny
#88. The thing had been quite unpremeditated on my part. I had not even thought of her as a woman until she came into my arms and revised my thinking on the subject.
Roger Zelazny
#89. 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.
Roger Zelazny
#90. Where would people stand on abortion if Saint Mary had gotten one?
Trent Zelazny
#91. Death is the only limit to the road you travel.
Roger Zelazny
#92. Time passed slowly, like and old man climbing a hill.
Roger Zelazny
#93. I'm very gullible when it comes to my own words. I believe everything I say, though I know I am a liar.
Roger Zelazny
#94. If I get enough letters saying you never explained this or that, I suppose I'll have to write another book.
Roger Zelazny
#95. 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.
Roger Zelazny
#96. I enjoy slaughtering beasts, and I think of my relatives constantly.
Roger Zelazny
#97. 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.
Roger Zelazny
#98. The power to hurt ... has evolved in a direct relationship to technological advancement.
Roger Zelazny
#99. When you are about to die, a wombat is better than no company at all.
Roger Zelazny
#100. He smelled the smells of commerce and listened to the cursing of the sailors, both of which he admired: the former, as it reeked of wealth, and the latter because it combined his two other chief preoccupations, these being theology and anatomy.
Roger Zelazny
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