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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.

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
Conscience
Triumphs
Victory
Trillion
Pieces
Victories
Composite
Race
Kills
Composites
History
Technical
Accommodation
True
Account
Mosaic
Men
Triumph
Mosaics
Accounts
Accommodations

More quotes by Jack Vance

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I just wrote what I felt like writing since they seemed to sell.
Jack Vance
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I give dignity second place to expedience.
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.
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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 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
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An inch of foreknowledge is worth ten miles of after-thought.
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.
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I don't read other science fiction. I don't read any at all.
Jack Vance
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Since we are not permitted to act, we are obliged to know.
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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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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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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
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I never worked in an office in my life.
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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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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Mischief moves somewhere near and I must blast it with my magic.
Jack Vance
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A barbarian is not aware that he is a barbarian.
Jack Vance
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As I mentioned, I was a carpenter for a time.
Jack Vance
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Well, I think everything I've ever read contributes to the background from which I write.
Jack Vance