Top 160 Roger Zelazny Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “We talked the moon out of heavens before either of us grew tired.”

— Roger Zelazny

52. “In the State of Denmark there was the odor of decay...”

— Roger Zelazny

53. “Be warned, therefore, that one does not go to hell to light a cigarette.”

— Roger Zelazny

54. “I saw the Old Moon with the New Moon in her arms, hovering above a row of poplars. The.”

— Roger Zelazny

55. “Beyond the River of the Blessed, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Avalon. Our swords were shattered in our hands and we hung our shields on the oak tree. The silver towers were fallen, into a sea of blood. How many miles to Avalon? None, I say, and all. The silver towers are fallen.”

— Roger Zelazny

56. “My books were all on their shelves. Nobody steals books but your friends.”

— Roger Zelazny

57. “Time passed slowly, like and old man climbing a hill.”

— Roger Zelazny

58. “I have decided, it is fruitless. For I am no longer sure of anything concerning my existance. A philosopher is a dead poet and a dying theologian.”

— Roger Zelazny

59. “The four points of the compass be logic, knowledge, wisdom and the unknown... To bow before the one is to lose sight of the three.”

— Roger Zelazny

60. “To speak is to name names, but to speak is not important. A thing happens once that has never happened before. Seeing it, a man looks upon reality. He cannot tell others what he has seen. Others wish to know, however, so they question him saying, ‘What is it like, this thing you have seen?’ So he tries to tell them.”

— Roger Zelazny

61. “If a building is falling on you, you don’t concern yourself with the horn of an approaching car. You deal with the most immediate peril first. That’s survival.”

— Roger Zelazny

62. “Death is the only limit to the road you travel.”

— Roger Zelazny

63. “It would be nice if there were some one thing constant and unchanging in the universe. If there is such a thing, then it is a thing which would have to be stronger than love, and it is a thing which I do not know.”

— Roger Zelazny

64. “His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god. But then, he never claimed not to be a god. Circumstances being what they were, neither admission could be of any benefit. Silence, though, could.”

— Roger Zelazny

65. “Reality is approximately as dependable as a politician’s promise... the result is the same: Reality, of the capital “R” variety, has become as relative a thing as the dryness of our respective Martinis. Yet the struggle goes on, the fight continues. Against what? Ultimately, Powers, Principalities, Thrones, and Dominations, often contained in hosts who are themselves victims, prisoners, manipulated men and women.”

— Roger Zelazny

66. “I just want to sleep the sleep of ages, to know again the Great Rest, the perpetual bliss, to hear the songs the stars sing on the shores of the great sea.”

— Roger Zelazny

67. “Being a god is the quality of being able to be yourself to such an extent that your passions correspond with the forces of the universe, so that.”

— Roger Zelazny

68. “I enjoy slaughtering beasts, and I think of my relatives constantly.”

— Roger Zelazny

69. “Many of my better short stories are just the last chapters of novels I did not write.”

— Roger Zelazny

70. “And the man clad in black and silver with a silver rose upon him? He would like to think that he has learned something of trust, that he has washed his eyes in some clear spring, that he has polished an ideal or two. Never Mind. He may still be only a smart-mouthed meddler, skilled mainly in the minor art of survival, blind as ever the dungeons knew him to the finer shades of irony. Never mind, let it go, let it be. I may never be pleased with him.”

— Roger Zelazny

71. “Then he sat down with his back against the door and ate his lunch. When he had finished, he threw the leaf wrappings over the edge and watched them fall, drifting from side to side on the air currents, until they were out of sight. He lit his pipe then and smoked.”

— Roger Zelazny

72. “As a student of business administration, I know that there is a law of evolution for organizations as stringent and inevitable as anything in life. The longer one exists, the more it grinds out restrictions that slow its own functions. It reaches entropy in a state of total narcissism. Only the people sufficiently far out in the field get anything done, and every time they do they are breaking half a dozen rules in the process.”

— Roger Zelazny

73. “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.”

— Roger Zelazny

74. “Only a fool believes that life has but one meaning.”

— Roger Zelazny

75. “If they come upon one who still has not seen it and they speak to him of fire, he does not know what they mean. So they, in turn, fall back upon telling him what fire is like. As they do so, they know from their own experience that what they are telling him is not the truth, but only a part of it. They know that this man will never know reality from their words, though all the words in the world are theirs to use.”

— Roger Zelazny

76. “My favorite form is the short story. From an aesthetics stand point you really have to pare down to the bone. You can’t write a throw-away scene.”

— Roger Zelazny

77. “If the liberal arts do nothing else they provide engaging metaphors for the thinking they displace.”

— Roger Zelazny

78. “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.”

— Roger Zelazny

79. “When I said I wanted to die in my sleep, I meant I wanted to be stepped on by an elephant while making love.”

— Roger Zelazny

80. “When there is no real hope we must mint our own. If the coin be counterfeit it still may be passed.”

— Roger Zelazny

81. “Hellwell lies at the top of the world and it leads down to its roots. It is probably as old as the world itself; and if it is not, it should be, because it looks as if it were.”

— Roger Zelazny

82. “I loved him like a brother – which is to say, not at all.”

— Roger Zelazny

83. “In that place there is always snow upon the ground, and rainbows ride like fur on the backs of icicles, which sprout about the frozen caps of cliffs. The air is sharp as a sword. The sky is bright as the eye of a cat. Very.”

— Roger Zelazny

84. “What an enormous chutzpah you possess,” I told him. “What makes you better than the rest of us, and more fit to rule?” “The fact that I was able to occupy the throne,” he replied. “Try and take it.”

— Roger Zelazny

85. “Hell, we make our own ifs. I had better things to think about than what could have happend.”

— Roger Zelazny

86. “You fertility deities are worse than Marxists,” he said. “You think that’s all that goes on between people. We were just friends for a time, but she is too hard on her friends and so loses them.”

— Roger Zelazny

87. “Life is a thing – if you’ll excuse a quick dab of philosophy before you know what kind of picture I’m painting – that reminds me quite a bit of the beaches around Tokyo Bay.”

— Roger Zelazny

88. “Two days like icebergs bleak, blank, half-melting, all frigid, mainly out of sight, and definitely a threat to peace of mind drifted by and were good to put behind.”

— Roger Zelazny

89. “I fail to see what difference it makes whether it be supernatural or not – so long as it is malefic, possesses great powers and life span and has the ability to change its shape at will.”

— Roger Zelazny

90. “I see myself as a novelist, period. I mean, the material I work with is what is classified as science fiction and fantasy, and I really don’t think about these things when I’m writing. I’m just thinking about telling a story and developing my characters.”

— Roger Zelazny

91. “There are none of you, good doctors, could cope with my family anyway.”

— Roger Zelazny

92. “And then the night wind, cool through arches of the years, came hounding after me.”

— Roger Zelazny

93. “So I simply said one of the great trite truths: “There is generally more than one side to a story.”

— Roger Zelazny

94. “It is anticipation and recollection that fill the heart – never the sensation of the moment.”

— Roger Zelazny

95. “I felt a strong desire to howl at the moon. It was such a howlable moon. But I restrained myself.”

— Roger Zelazny

96. “Most people who daydream of transforming themselves into some vicious beast and going about tearing people’s throats out, dismembering them, disfiguring them and perhaps devouring them tend mainly to dwell upon how much fun it would be and generally neglect the practicalities of the situation.”

— Roger Zelazny

97. “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.”

— Roger Zelazny

98. “What man who has lived for more than a score of years desires justice, warrior? For my part, I find mercy infinitely more attractive. Give me a forgiving deity any day.”

— Roger Zelazny

99. “The death of an illusion tends to disconcert.”

— Roger Zelazny

100. “The dead are too much with us.”

— Roger Zelazny