Quote

While we are alive we should sit among colored lights and taste good wines, and discuss our adventures in far places when we are dead, the opportunity is past.

Jack Vance

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Jack Vance
Age: 96 †
Born: 1916
Born: August 28
Died: 2013
Died: May 26
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
San Francisco County
California
John Holbrook Vance
Jack Vance
John H. Vance
Alive
Discuss
Opportunity
Lights
Past
Adventure
Light
Wine
Good
Places
Taste
Wines
Among
Adventures
Dead
Colored

More quotes by Jack Vance

Image
I haven't sold to the movies. In other words, I haven't gotten any enormous checks yet.
Jack Vance
Image
Truth is contained in the preconceptions of him who seeks to define it. Any organization of ideas whatever presupposes a judgment on the world.
Jack Vance
Image
But I'm so slow on it because I find it terribly hard writing blind on computers. The computer speaks to me, but it's just so slow, I'm so terribly slow using it.
Jack Vance
Image
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.
Jack Vance
Image
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.
Jack Vance
Image
I never worked in an office in my life.
Jack Vance
Image
A barbarian is not aware that he is a barbarian.
Jack Vance
Image
I just wrote what I felt like writing since they seemed to sell.
Jack Vance
Image
In the end, death came uniformly to all, and all extracted as much satisfaction from their dying as this essentially graceless process could afford.
Jack Vance
Image
Good music always defeats bad luck
Jack Vance
Image
I was a carpenter for a time and everybody watches what you do.
Jack Vance
Image
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.
Jack Vance
Image
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.
Jack Vance
Image
A reader is not supposed to be aware that someone's written the story. He's supposed to be completely immersed, submerged in the environment.
Jack Vance
Image
But, for instance, when I was awfully young, I read all the Oz books. They were an enormous influence on me.
Jack Vance
Image
Since we are not permitted to act, we are obliged to know.
Jack Vance
Image
Mischief moves somewhere near and I must blast it with my magic.
Jack Vance
Image
An inch of foreknowledge is worth ten miles of after-thought.
Jack Vance
Image
The inscrutability [of economics] is perhaps not unintentional. It gives endless employment to dialecticians who otherwise might become public charges or, at very worst, swindlers and tricksters.
Jack Vance
Image
As I mentioned, I was a carpenter for a time.
Jack Vance