"I can see now that if I’d stayed I’d have gone the way of Pulg and all such Great Men—fat, power-racked, lieutenant-plagued, smothered with false-hearted dancing girls, and finally falling into the arms of religion. At least I’m saved that last chronic ailment, which is worse than the dropsy."

"There would have been no insurmountable problem at all, of course, if Bwadres had only had that touch of realism about money matters that, when a true crisis arises, is almost invariably shown by even the fattest, greediest priest or the skinniest, most unworldly holy man."

"Pulg, alongside his pink streak of sentimentality, had recently taken to sporting a gray one of superstition."

"Bored and insecure men will loose arrows at dust motes."

"Aye, there’s the bitter core of all freedom: no pay!"

"“So tell me, giant philosopher, why we’re not dukes,” the Gray Mouser demanded, unrolling a forefinger from the fist on his knee so that it pointed across the brazier at Fafhrd. “Or emperors, for that matter, or demigods.” “We are not dukes because we’re no man’s man,” Fafhrd replied smugly, setting his shoulders against the stone horse-trough. “Even the duke must butter up a king, and demigods the gods. We butter no one. We so our own way, choosing our own adventures—and our own follies! Better freedom and a chilly road than a warm hearth and servitude.” “There speaks the hound turned out by his last master and not yet found new boots to slaver on,” the Mouser retorted with comradely sardonic impudence."

"The Devourers want to brood about their great service to the many universes—it is their claim that servile customers make the most obedient subjects for the gods."

"The Devourers want not only the patronage of all beings in all universes, but—doubtless because they are afraid someone will some day raise the ever-unpleasant question of the true worth of things—they want all their customers reduced to a state of slavish and submissive suggestibility, so that they are fit for nothing whatever but to gawk at and buy the trash the Devourers offer for sale."

"Girls had a way of blotting out all lesser, but not thereby despicable, delights. Girls were for dessert."

"They, like many priests, had been much too fanatical and not nearly as clever as the god they served."

"Too much good luck was always dangerous."

"“What’s the use of knowing the name of a skull? One would never have occasion to talk of it,” said the fat thief loudly. “What interests me is that it has rubies for eyes.”"

"Unlike men, rubies and emeralds do not rest quietly in their graves."

"Let fools seek it. They shall win it not. For although my treasure house be empty as air, no deadly creature in rocky lair, no sentinel outside anywhere, no pitfall, poison, trap, or snare, above and below the whole place bare, of demon or devil not a hair, no serpent lethal-fanged yet fair, no skull with mortal eye a-glare, yet have I left a guardian there. Let the wise read this riddle and forbear."

"Thieves and astrologers moved restlessly in their sleep, sensing that the hours of night and work were drawing near."

"“Oaths are made to be kept only until their purpose be fulfilled,” the fluty voice responded. “Every geas is lifted at last, every self-set rule repealed. Otherwise orderliness in life becomes a limitation to growth; discipline, chains; integrity, bondage and evil-doing.”"

"We have searched the wide world over and not found forgetfulness."

"Revenge is empty. It cannot bring back the dead."

"Fafhrd retorted, a little hotly, “Killing in fight isn’t murder.” Again the Mouser shrugged. “Killing is murder, no matter what nice names you give. Just as eating is devouring, and drinking guzzling.”"

"For what is life but greed in action?"

"And I, well, in the month I’ve been here I’ve learned that the only way to survive in civilization is to abide by its unwritten rules—far more important than its laws chiseled in stone—and break them only at peril, in deepest secrecy, and taking all precautions."

"Aye, we played at being mice, forgetting cats are real."

"Women are horrible. I mean, quite as horrible as men. Oh, is there anyone in the wide world that has aught but ice water in his or her veins?"

"I know, I know, the folk here are narrow-visioned, custom-bound. But matched with the twisted minds of civilization, they’re straight as pines."

"Afterward loses too many battles to Too Late."

"Barbarism can match civilization’s every stench. Not one move in our frostbit lives but is strictured by a mad god’s laws, which we call customs, and by black-handed irrationalities from which there is no escape."

"Sooner give a cobra a kiss, than a secret to a woman."

"Then he was running not so much away from the cold and its crippling, supernatural horrors, as toward civilization, which was once again a bright emblem in his brain, an answer to all small-mindedness."

"Understatement is the horror writer’s surest tool. Fritz Leiber, Terror, Mystery, Wonder in The World Fantasy Awards Volume Two, p. xxxi"

"To merit serious consideration, fiction of any sort must satisfy one pragmatic requirement (making due allowance for the time and place when it was written): Does it convince the reader?"

"Not “according to rule” and “something more”—those are the watchwords of the literature of supernatural dread."

"No wonder without fear, no fear without wonder—that’s the rule for the cosmic weird tale and also the compensation for the pains of fear, the jewel in the toad’s head."

"Now when I was corresponding with Lovecraft I was very enthusiastic about Fort’s books, and without thinking twice, I wrote him about how the man had brought to light facts that science had neglected or denied. Whereupon Lovecraft courteously explain to me how scientists cannot accept “new facts” on the basis of single or scattered reports, even by competent technicians and observers, and that experiments or observations must be repeatable—there must be general agreement—before they can become part of the body of scientific knowledge. And this is quite true, of course. Scientists don’t arrive at the truth by inward certainty or by majority vote, but they do demonstrate it to each other (and to other men) by open and rational procedures. If an experiment or observation can’t be repeated, it can’t be accepted, no matter how great the reputation, scientific or otherwise, of the man who says he did it or saw it; the matter must then be tabled as an anecdote (perhaps an extremely interesting one) but unproven (it’s very much like that Scottish criminal-law verdict) until new evidence comes in, if ever. (That’s why, incidentally, there can’t be a true science of history, or of artistic creation, or a lot of other things; you can’t repeat the past to verify it; nor can you go back and rewrite Hamlet to check up.)"

"The Seven Subjects of Sensational Journalism: crime, scandal, speculative science, insanity, superstitions such as numerology, monsters, and millionaires."

"There is an inescapable imperative about certain industrial developments. If there is not a safe road of advance, then a dangerous one will invariably be taken."

"Beside me, traffic growled and snarled, rising at times to a machine-gun rata-tat-tat, while pedestrians were scuttling about with that desperate ratlike urgency characteristic of all big American cities, but which reaches its ultimate in New York."

"Two things will last to the end of time, at least for the tribes of Western Man, no matter how far his spaceships rove. They are sorcery and romantic love, which come to much the same thing in the end."

"Work and pray, Live on hay. You’ll get pie In the sky When you die— It’s a lie!"

"“You are not the first to be shocked and horrified by chess,” he assured her. “It is a curse of the intellect. It is a game for lunatics—or else it creates them.”"

"To understand why George fell for this story, one must remember his stifled romanticism, his sense of personal failure, his deep need to believe. The thing came to him like, or rather instead of, a religious conversion."

"“Life’s always been a business of working hard and fighting the cold,” Pa was saying. “The earth’s always been a lonely place, millions of miles from the next planet. And no matter how long the human race might have lived, the end would have come some night. Those things don’t matter. What matters is that life is good. It has a lovely texture, like some thick fur or the petals of flowers—you’ve never seen those, but you know our ice-flowers—or like the texture of flames, never twice the same. It makes everything else worth while. And that’s as true for the last man as for the first.”"

"Naturally a parent pretends to his child to be a little more perfect than he actually is. To admit any of his real weaknesses would be too much like encouraging vice."

"Every human being believes he is perfect in his way, even the most miserable scoundrel or dreamer."

"Laymen always accuse actors of acting. Because we can portray genuine emotion, we're supposed to be unable to feel it. It's the oldest charge made against us."

"He had the dim realization that the universe, like a huge sleepy animal, knew what he was trying to do and was trying to thwart him. This feeling of opposition made him determined to outmaneuver the universe—not the first guy to yield to such a temptation, of course."

"Everyone knows Newton as the great scientist. Few remember that he spent half his life muddling with alchemy, looking for the philosopher's stone. That was the pebble by the seashore he really wanted to find."