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A barbarian is not aware that he is a barbarian.

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
Barbarian
Barbarians
Aware

More quotes by Jack Vance

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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.
Jack Vance
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I give dignity second place to expedience.
Jack Vance
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Nothing is more conspicuous than a farting princess.
Jack Vance
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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.
Jack Vance
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Vance has a genius in evoking the beauty of strangeness, the strangeness of beauty.
Jack Vance
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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
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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.
Jack Vance
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As I mentioned, I was a carpenter for a time.
Jack Vance
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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.
Jack Vance
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Beauty compelled admiration and erotic yearning such was its organic function. But never by itself could it command love.
Jack Vance
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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
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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.
Jack Vance
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Since we are not permitted to act, we are obliged to know.
Jack Vance
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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.
Jack Vance
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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
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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.
Jack Vance
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I haven't sold to the movies. In other words, I haven't gotten any enormous checks yet.
Jack Vance
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I don't read other science fiction. I don't read any at all.
Jack Vance
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Good music always defeats bad luck
Jack Vance
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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