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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

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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
Ease
Uncertainties
Absolutes
Undeniable
Real
Orthodoxy
Good
Facility
Uncertain
Denied
Relative
Uncertainty
Formulations

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Good music always defeats bad luck
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I'd never been published when I was young.
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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.
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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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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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I don't read other science fiction. I don't read any at all.
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Mischief moves somewhere near and I must blast it with my magic.
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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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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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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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Law cannot reach where enforcement will not follow. —Popular aphorism.
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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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Since we are not permitted to act, we are obliged to know.
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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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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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Beauty compelled admiration and erotic yearning such was its organic function. But never by itself could it command love.
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Well, I think everything I've ever read contributes to the background from which I write.
Jack Vance
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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.
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