Quote

I'd never been published when I was young.

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
Published
Young
Never

More quotes by 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
I categorically declare first my absolute innocence, second my lack of criminal intent, and third my effusive apologies.
Jack Vance
Image
I was a carpenter for a time and everybody watches what you do.
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
Beauty compelled admiration and erotic yearning such was its organic function. But never by itself could it command love.
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 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
Image
Then there was Clark Ashton Smith, who wrote for Weird Tales and who had a wild imagination. He wasn't a very talented writer, but his imagination was wonderful.
Jack Vance
Image
I just wrote what I felt like writing since they seemed to sell.
Jack Vance
Image
Well, I think everything I've ever read contributes to the background from which I write.
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
Mischief moves somewhere near and I must blast it with my magic.
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
Vance has a genius in evoking the beauty of strangeness, the strangeness of beauty.
Jack Vance
Image
Nothing is more conspicuous than a farting princess.
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
Law cannot reach where enforcement will not follow. —Popular aphorism.
Jack Vance
Image
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.
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
I give dignity second place to expedience.
Jack Vance