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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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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
Seeks
Define
Organization
Judgment
Whatever
Truth
Presupposes
Ideas
Preconceptions
World
Contained

More quotes by Jack Vance

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I categorically declare first my absolute innocence, second my lack of criminal intent, and third my effusive apologies.
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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Law cannot reach where enforcement will not follow. —Popular aphorism.
Jack Vance
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But Roy Rockwood, it was science fiction for the sake of science fiction.
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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An inch of foreknowledge is worth ten miles of after-thought.
Jack Vance
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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
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Mischief moves somewhere near and I must blast it with my magic.
Jack Vance
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I never worked in an office in my life.
Jack Vance
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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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Vance has a genius in evoking the beauty of strangeness, the strangeness of beauty.
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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I was an omnivore at reading, so that everything I ever read contributed.
Jack Vance
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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.
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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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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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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A barbarian is not aware that he is a barbarian.
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