Top 120 Jack Vance Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Since we are not permitted to act, we are obliged to know.”

— Jack Vance

102. “I don’t read other science fiction. I don’t read any at all.”

— Jack Vance

103. “Who are our basic enemies? This is a secret, unknown even to these basic enemies.” – Xaviar Skolcamp, Over-Centennial Fellow of the Institute, indulgently, in response to a journalist’s too-searching question.”

— Jack Vance

104. “I was a precocious child, and I resolved to read everything I could get my hands on, in order to encapsulate the whole of human knowledge. At the time the project seemed less impractical than it does today. I did as best I could and by the time I was ten or elven had read what I suspect was equivalent to a college education.”

— Jack Vance

105. “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

106. “Somebody else’s ignorance is bliss.”

— Jack Vance

107. “One becomes sated with platitudes no less than honey, so that one often breaks another’s bones in one’s vexation.”

— Jack Vance

108. “Lord Daldace looked about as if seeing the villa for the first time. “What are dreams? Ordinary experience is a dream. The eyes, the ears, the nose: they present pictures on the brain, and these pictures are called ‘reality’. At night, when we dream, other pictures, of source unknown, are impinged. Sometimes the dream-images are more real than ‘reality’. Which is solid, which illusion? Why trouble to make the distinction?”

— Jack Vance

109. “There had been an attempt to humiliate him. It had not succeeded. He had paid, but pain, like pleasure, has no duration. Pride was an entity more persistent.”

— Jack Vance

110. “But Roy Rockwood, it was science fiction for the sake of science fiction.”

— Jack Vance

111. “How can we do this? We are told that our world is too small for men of eternal life. This is true. We must become pioneers again, we must break out into new territories! The men of old carved living space from the wilderness; we must do the same, and let this be the condition for eternal life! Is it not sufficient? When a man creates his living space and guarantees his sustenance, is he not entitled to life?”

— Jack Vance

112. “Well, I think everything I’ve ever read contributes to the background from which I write.”

— Jack Vance

113. “First coming aboard, a new arrival makes a cautious survey of the crew, trying to winnow the affable and good-natured from the surly and truculent. Some of the crewmen will seem easygoing, happy-go-lucky, good-fellows-all; others may appear to be reserved or even aloof. Yet I found that at the end of a voyage these aloof ones were often the persons whom I grew to like and respect the most, while those who seemed so agreeable turned out to be rascals.”

— Jack Vance

114. “Vance has a genius in evoking the beauty of strangeness, the strangeness of beauty.”

— Jack Vance

115. “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

116. “Light slanting down across Alode the Cliff illuminated a hundred forests; the irradiated foliage seemed to glow with internal light: bitter lime, intense gray-blue given pointillist fire by scarlet seed-pots, dark umber, black-blue, black-green.”

— Jack Vance

117. “If religions are diseases of the human psyche, as the philosopher Grintholde asserts, then religious wars must be reckoned the resultant sores and cankers infecting the aggregate corpus of the human race. Of all wars, these are the most detestable, since they are waged for no tangible gain, but only to impose a set of arbitrary credos upon another’s mind.”

— Jack Vance

118. “Extraordinary that those who command the perquisites of place are those most ready to ignore them! It is as if the blessings of Providence are specious, and notable only in their absence. Ah well, I refuse to speculate.”

— Jack Vance

119. “But I’ve sure worked at jobs where I have been under inspection.”

— Jack Vance

120. “This,” said Iucounu, “is my friend Firx, from the star Achernar, who is far wiser than he seems. Firx is annoyed at being separated from his comrade with whom he shares a vat in my workroom. He will assist you in the expeditious discharge of your duties.” Iucounu stepped close, deftly thrust the creature against Cugel’s abdomen. It merged into his viscera, took up a vigilant post clasped around Cugel’s liver.”

— Jack Vance

121. “To the furthest reach of my memory, Rogol Domedonfors ruled the city. He knew lore of all ages, secrets of fire and light, gravity and countergravity, the knowledge of superphysic numeration, metathasm, corolopsis.”

— Jack Vance

122. “Mazirian made a selection from his books and with great effort forced five spells upon his brain: Phandaal’s Gyrator, Felojun’s Second Hypnotic Spell, The Excellent Prismatic Spray, The Charm of Untiring Nourishment, and the Spell of the Omnipotent Sphere. This accomplished, Mazirian drank wine and retired to his couch.”

— Jack Vance

123. “Every instant a million events occur one iota past the edge of your awareness.”

— Jack Vance

124. “Have you any further questions?” “Bah,” grumbled Kalash. “What good are questions, when the answers are all non-sequiturs?” Maloof nodded in agreement. “There is something in what you say.”

— Jack Vance

125. “Turjan closed the book, forcing the spell back into oblivion. He robed himself with a short blue cape, tucked a blade into his belt, fitted the amulet holding Laccodel’s Rune to his wrist. Then he sat down and from a journal chose the spells he would take with him. What dangers he might meet he could not know, so he selected three spells of general application: the Excellent Prismatic Spray, Phandaal’s Mantle of Stealth, and the Spell of the Slow Hour.”

— Jack Vance

126. “Mazirian shook off the spell, if such it were, and uttered a spell of his own, and all the valley was lit by streaming darts of fire, lashing in from all directions to spit Thrang’s blundering body in a thousand places. This was the Excellent Prismatic Spray – many-colored stabbing lines. Thrang was dead almost at once, purple blood flowing from countless holes where the radiant rain had pierced him.”

— Jack Vance

127. “T’sais mounted her horse and set out for Earth, seeking love and beauty.”

— Jack Vance

128. “To move the rocks might yield magical treasures, or, more likely, some unimaginable woe.”

— Jack Vance

129. “Fear had exceeded its power; fear no longer had meaning. A brain could react only to the maximum of its intensity; how could this thing harm him now?”

— Jack Vance