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I do read books. I suppose it's more or less the same thing, but at least I'm alone and I'm an individual. I can stop anytime I want, which I frequently do.

Jack Vance

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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
Books
Less
Read
Anytime
Individual
Frequently
Book
Suppose
Thing
Least
Stop
Alone

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Vance has a genius in evoking the beauty of strangeness, the strangeness of beauty.
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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.
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Since we are not permitted to act, we are obliged to know.
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Good music always defeats bad luck
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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.
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I'd never been published when I was young.
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There was a writer in the '20s called Christopher Morley, who I remember a little bit of, who had some influence on me, but I couldn't tell you what it was.
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In the end, death came uniformly to all, and all extracted as much satisfaction from their dying as this essentially graceless process could afford.
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As I mentioned, I was a carpenter for a time.
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I categorically declare first my absolute innocence, second my lack of criminal intent, and third my effusive apologies.
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Right now I'm so old that if I had a big gush of money, I don't know what I'd do with it. I don't travel anymore. I don't need anything, don't want anything. I'd give it to my son, I guess, and let him enjoy it.
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I give dignity second place to expedience.
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Mischief moves somewhere near and I must blast it with my magic.
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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.
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A man is like a rope: both break at a definite strain....The solution is not splicing the rope it's lessening the tension.
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An inch of foreknowledge is worth ten miles of after-thought.
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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.
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I was a carpenter for a time and everybody watches what you do.
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Law cannot reach where enforcement will not follow. —Popular aphorism.
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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.
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