Roger Zelazny

"Within the theater Agony on the stage of Delirium in the heat-lightning lit landscape of Night and Dream there go upon the boards the memories that never were, compounded of that which was and that which is not, that which is and that which can never be, informed with fleeting or lingering passions, sexless or sexful, profound or absurd, seldom remembered, sometimes coherent, beautiful, ugly, or mundane upon experience, generally inane in reflection, strangely sad or happy, colorfully dark or darkly light, and this is about all that can be said of them, save that the spark which ignites them, too, is unknown."

"“...And I have seen stranger things in a long and colorful career.” “Exactly. So what is the problem in believing my story?” “You’ve nothing to back it up with. Even if you’re right, I’m still right in not believing without evidence.”"

"The dead are too much with us."

"“If we don’t make it, the population of the continent may be cut in half.” “If it’s a question of them or me, I’d rather it was them.” “I sometimes wonder how people like you happen.” “The same way as anybody else, mister, and it’s fun for a couple people for a while, and then the trouble starts.” “What did they ever do to you, Hell?” “Nothing. What did they ever do for me? Nothing. Nothing. What do I owe them? The same.”"

"Is not love itself a form of a spell, where one is loved and the other loves, and the one who loves is compelled to do the other’s bidding? Of course. It is the same thing."

"After signing it, he added the postscript: By the time you read this, you will already be dead."

"“Silence, Set!” cries Anubis. “Don’t listen to him, Madrak. He sees your weakness, as he sees the weaknesses of all things he encounters. He seeks to draw you onto a battlefield of another sort, one where you struggle against yourself, to be beaten by the guilt he has contrived for you. Ignore him!”"

"Nick swore he’d die with this boots on, on some exotic safari, but he found his Kilimanjaro in a hospital on Earth, where they’d cured everything that was bothering him, except for the galloping pneumonia he’d picked up in the hospital. That had been, roughly, two hundred and fifty years ago. I’d been a pallbearer."

"“May the blind things at the bottom of the great sea, whose bellies are circles of light,” he said, “recall with pleasure the flavor of your marrow.”"

"“Buy into a rising market,” had always been his philosophy, not to mention his religion, sex, politics, and aesthetics."

"So do not speak to me of souls when you have never seen one, man."

"“Mercy, I have learned, is a thing that is withheld from one whenever he most needs it,” he said. “Yet when he is in a position to grant it himself, those who withheld it previously cry out for it.”"

"He was one of those scientist-artists who comes along every few centuries to justify the existence of that overworked word “genius.”"

"“And you, I take it, are Red Dorakeen?” “That is correct. Anything I can do for you?” “As a matter of fact, yes. You can die.”"

"“It is difficult to understand. It seems brutal, it seems harsh…” “It is life and it is death. It is the greatest blessing and the greatest curse in the universe. You do not have to understand it, Wakim. Your comprehension or your lack of it, your approval or your disapproval, will in no way alter its operation.”"

"Oh, cynical monger of indulgences! ’Twould take a man of the cloth to work a scheme like that!"

"Symbols, by their very nature, conceal as well as indicate, damn them!"

"“Everything that’s miserable in the world,” Nick the dwarf once said to me, “is because of beauty.” “Not truth or goodness?” I’d asked. “Oh, they help. But beauty is the culprit, the real principle of evil.” “Not wealth?” “Money is beautiful.”"

"I was born on the planet Earth, into the middle of the twentieth century, that period in the history of the race when man succeeded in casting off many of the inhibitions and taboos laid upon him by tradition, reveled for a brief time, and then discovered that it didn’t make a bloody bit of difference that he had. He was still just as dead when he died, and he was still faced with every life-death problem that had confronted him before, compounded by the fact that Malthus was right."

"Dwelling beside a body of water is tonic for the weary psyche. Sea smells, sea birds, seawrack, sands—alternately cool, warm, moist and dry—a taste of brine and the presence of the rocking, slopping bluegraygreen spit-flecked waters, has the effect of rinsing the emotions, bathing the outlook, bleaching the conscience."

"I was cruising along on Tokyo Bay, and suddenly this was the answer, looming, the heaped remains of everything that goes down and does not come again to shore, life’s giant kitchen-midden, the rubbish heap that remains after all things pass, the place that stands in testament to the futility of all ideals and intentions, good or bad, the rock that smashes values, there, signalizing the ultimate uselessness of life itself, which must one day be broken upon it, not to rise, no, never, not ever, again."

"I had wanted to go after her, to explain my part in what had happened. But I knew it would do no good, so why lose face? When a fairy tale blows up and the dream dust settles and you find yourself standing there, knowing that the last line will never be written, why not omit any exercises in futility?"

"Toward the bright stars, from the dark ground, he hurled another petition, for whatever it was worth."

"“From the shape of a cloud I know that a man in a distant city will quarrel with his wife three seasons hence and a murderer will be hanged before I finish speaking. From the falling of a stone I know the number of maidens being seduced and the movements of icebergs on the other side of the world. From the texture of the wind I know where next the lightning will fall. So long have I watched and so much am I part of all things, that nothing is hidden from me.” “You know where I go?” “Yes.” “And what I would do there?” “I know that, too.” “Then tell me if you know, will I succeed in that which I desire?” “You will succeed in that which you are about, but by then it may not be what you desire.” “I do not understand you, Morningstar.” “I know that, too. But that is the way it is with all oracles, Jack. When that which is foreseen comes to pass, the inquirer is no longer the same person he was when he posed the question. It is impossible to make a man understand what he will become with the passage of time; and it is only a future self to whom a prophecy is truly relevant.”"

"“You were both correct,” said Morningstar. “It is the same thing that you both describe, although neither of you sees it as it really is. Each of you colors reality in keeping with your means of controlling it. For if it is uncontrollable, you fear it. Sometimes then, you color it incomprehensible. In your case, a machine; in theirs, a demon.”"

"I have noted, too, that when it comes to matters of security the laws are considerably relaxed."

"Life is seldom so pivotally crisis-conditioned a thing as novelists would have us believe. While it is true that we sometimes recover from shocks with a sense of the freshness of reality and the wonder of existence, this state of mind does pass away—and fairly rapidly, at that—leaving both reality and ourselves untransfigured once more."

"Anyone who rushes toward an unknown peril simply to satisfy a desire for excitement is a fool."

"There are circumstances under which the anomalous should be courted. Ignorance is one of them."

"I had no doubts as to the correctness of my own beliefs, that human nature could be altered, that man could be forced to evolve morally."

"My mind spun for a second before it drifted, and in that second I knew that of all pleasures—a drink of cold water when you are thirsty, liquor when you are not, sex, a cigarette after many days without one—there is none of them can compare with sleep. Sleep is best...."

"“Some worlds have too much life,“ he says. “Life—crawling, pullulating, fecundating, smothering itself—worlds too clement, too full of the sciences which keep men alive—worlds which would drown themselves in their own semen, worlds which would pack all of their lands with crowds of big-bellied women—and so go down to death beneath the weight of their own fruitfulness. Then there are worlds which are bleak and barren and bitter, worlds which grind life like grain. Even with body modifications and with world-change machines, there are only a few hundred worlds which may be inhabited by the six intelligent races. Life is badly needed in the worst of these. It can be a deadly blessing on the best. When I say that life is needed or not needed in certain places, I am of course also saying that death is needed or not needed. I am not speaking of two different things, but of the same thing. Osiris and I are bookkeepers. We credit and we debit. We raise waves, or we cause waves to sink back again into the ocean. Can life be counted upon to limit itself? No. It is the mindless striving of two to become infinity. Can death be counted on to limit itself? Never. It is the equally mindless effort of zero to encompass infinity.”"

"Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything you may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness. Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to insure any possible benefit for which you may be eligible after the destruction of your body, I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure your receiving said benefit. I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen."

"This day she’ll off across the sky on her own wild ways to show.… There, in the worlds of the Life and the Death, the worlds that she used to know. Now, some say her name is Mercy and others say it’s Lust. Her secret name is Isis. Her secret soul is dust."

"This added the element of mystery that made the comparison inevitable: life is a thing that reminds me quite a bit of the beaches around Tokyo Bay. Anything goes. Strange and unique things are being washed up all the time. I’m one of them and so are you. We spend some time on the beach, maybe side by side, and then that slopping, smelling, chilly thing rakes it with the liquid fingers of a crumbling hand and some of the things are gone again."

"Then I could turn around and justify that, by saying that it isn’t really paranoia if there really are people out to get you."

"I watched the spinning stars, grateful, sad and proud, as only a man who has outlived his destiny and realizes he might yet forge himself another, can be."

"At one time, tips were given only for things you logically would want to have done efficiently and promptly, and they served to supplement a lower payscale for certain classes of employment. This was understood, accepted. It was tourism, back in the century of my birth, cluing in the underdeveloped countries to the fact that all tourists are marks, that set the precedent, which then spread to all countries, even back to the tourists’ own, of the benefits which might be gained by those who wear uniforms and render the undesired and the unrequested with a smile. This is the army that conquered the world. After their quiet revolution in the twentieth century, we all became tourists the minute we set foot outside our front doors, second-class citizens, to be ruthlessly exploited by the smiling legions who had taken over, slyly, completely."

"Earth grates on my nerves. It gives me a big pain these days. That’s why I live out here. Earth is overcrowded, bureaucratic, unhealthy, and suffering from too many mass-psychoses to bother classifying."

"There comes a time in the history of all bureaucracies when they must inevitably parody their own functions."

"The stars blazed like the love of God, cold and distant."

"Of all the things a man may do, sleep probably contributes most to keeping him sane. It puts brackets about each day. If you do something foolish or painful today, you get irritated if somebody mentions it, today. If it happened yesterday, though, you can nod or chuckle, as the case may be. You’ve crossed through nothingness or dream to another island in Time."

"For me, I have seen worlds and people begin and end, actually and metaphorically, and it will always be the same. It’s always fire and water. No matter what your scientific background, emotionally you’re an alchemist. You live in a world of liquids, solids, gases and heat-transfer effects that accompany their changes of state. These are the things you perceive, the things you feel. Whatever you know about their true natures is rafted on top of that. So, when it comes to the day-to-day sensations of living, from mixing a cup of coffee to flying a kite, you treat with the four ideal elements of the old philosophers: earth, air, fire, water. Let’s face it, air isn’t very glamorous, no matter how you look at it. I mean, I’d hate to be without it, but it’s invisible and so long as it behaves itself it can be taken for granted and pretty much ignored. Earth? The trouble with earth is that it endures. Solid objects tend to persist with a monotonous regularity. Not so fire and water, however. They’re formless, colorful, and they’re always doing something. While suggesting you repent, prophets very seldom predict the wrath of the gods in terms of landslides and hurricanes. No. Floods and fires are what you get for the rottenness of your ways. Primitive man was really on his way when he learned to kindle the one and had enough of the other nearby to put it out. It is coincidence that we’ve filled hells with fires and oceans with monsters? I don’t think so. Both principles are mobile, which is generally a sign of life. Both are mysterious and possess the power to hurt or kill. It is no wonder that intelligent creatures the universe over have reacted to them in a similar fashion. It is the alchemical response."

"I’d lived far too long, and with every day that passed the odds kept growing against my lasting much longer. Although they didn’t put it quite that way when giving the sales pitch, my insurance company’s attitude is reflected in the size of the premiums involved."

"“Could Yarl the Omnipotent create a stone so heavy he couldn’t lift it?” Green Green asked him. ”No,” said Courtcour. ”Why not?” ”He would not.” ”That is no answer.” ”Yes, it is. Think about it. Would you?”"

"Even if they had been real gods, what did it matter? What was it to me? Here I was still, right where I was born a thousand or so years before, in the middle of the human condition—namely, rubbish and pain. If the gods were real, their only relationship with us was to use us to play their games. Screw them all."

"“Then it is impossible to get an honest answer from you.” “If by ‘honest answer’ you mean for me to say what you want me to say, whether or not it is true, then I would say that you are correct.”"

"He doubted that his petition would be heard, however, since he did not feel that the gods would devote much attention to anything emitted from this particular portion of the world."

"There’s no need for your pretty lies now. It makes no difference to an old woman the things a young girl believed."

"“Why do you tell me this?” “Perhaps because I am a cat and it amuses me to be arbitrary and do you a good turn.”"