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

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

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Beauty compelled admiration and erotic yearning such was its organic function. But never by itself could it command love.
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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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Nothing is more conspicuous than a farting princess.
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I know that the history of man is not his technical triumphs, his kills, his victories. It is a composite, a mosaic of a trillion pieces, the account of each man's accommodation with his conscience. This is the true history of the race.
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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.
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Since we are not permitted to act, we are obliged to know.
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I'd never been published when I was young.
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I don't read other science fiction. I don't read any at all.
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I just wrote what I felt like writing since they seemed to sell.
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I haven't sold to the movies. In other words, I haven't gotten any enormous checks yet.
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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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But, for instance, when I was awfully young, I read all the Oz books. They were an enormous influence on me.
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But Roy Rockwood, it was science fiction for the sake of science fiction.
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Truth is contained in the preconceptions of him who seeks to define it. Any organization of ideas whatever presupposes a judgment on the world.
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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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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.
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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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An inch of foreknowledge is worth ten miles of after-thought.
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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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Count me not your friend but the enemy of your enemies.
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