Quote

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

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
Writer
Chickens
Prescriptions
Rooms
Latin
Dining
Less
Doctor
Hides
Care
Mirrors
Utmost
Better
Master
Slaughter
Writing
Doctors
Magician
Slaughters
Work
Masters
Chef
Discusses
Room
Writes
Hinges

More quotes by 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
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
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
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
Image
This is no science, this is art, where equations fall away to elements like resolving chords, and where always prevails a symmetry either explicit or multiplex, but always of a crystalline serenity.
Jack Vance
Image
A man is like a rope: both break at a definite strain....The solution is not splicing the rope it's lessening the tension.
Jack Vance
Image
I was an omnivore at reading, so that everything I ever read contributed.
Jack Vance
Image
Vance has a genius in evoking the beauty of strangeness, the strangeness of beauty.
Jack Vance
Image
I don't read other science fiction. I don't read any at all.
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
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
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
An inch of foreknowledge is worth ten miles of after-thought.
Jack Vance
Image
Jack Vance's Lyonesse books are the greatest fairy tale of the twentieth century.
Jack Vance
Image
Count me not your friend but the enemy of your enemies.
Jack Vance
Image
Beauty is a luster which love bestows to guile the eye. Therefore it may be said that only when the brain is without love will the eye look and see no beauty.
Jack Vance
Image
Well, I think everything I've ever read contributes to the background from which I write.
Jack Vance
Image
I'd never been published when I was young.
Jack Vance
Image
I categorically declare first my absolute innocence, second my lack of criminal intent, and third my effusive apologies.
Jack Vance