Jack Vance
Jack Vance
John Holbrook "Jack" Vancewas an American mystery, fantasy, and science fiction writer. Though most of his work has been published under the name Jack Vance, he also wrote 9 mystery novels using his full name John Holbrook Vance, three under the pseudonym Ellery Queen, and one each using the pseudonyms Alan Wade, Peter Held, John van See, and Jay Kavanse. Some editions of his published works give his year of birth as 1920...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth28 August 1916
CitySan Francisco, CA
CountryUnited States of America
I worked for half a cent a word. I'm not a fast writer to begin with, so for the first few years I had do other things.
Why make plans? The sun might well go out tomorrow.
The void is a mouth crying to be filled, a blank mind aching for thought, a cavity desperate for shape. What is not implies what is.
There are no absolute certainties in this universe. A man must try to whip order into a yelping pack of probabilities, and uniform success is impossible.
I categorically declare first my absolute innocence, second my lack of criminal intent, and third my effusive apologies.
I must cite an intrinsic condition of the universe. We set forth in any direction which seems convenient; each leads to the same place: the end of the universe.
Beauty compelled admiration and erotic yearning; such was its organic function. But never by itself could it command love.
When you demand the nature of my motives, you reveal the style of your thinking to be callow, captious, superficial, craven, uncertain and impudent.
Human interactions, stimulated as they are by disequilibrium, never achieve balance. In even the most favorable transaction, one party whether he realizes it or not must always come out the worse.
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.
Beauty is a luster which love bestows to guile the eye. Therefore it may be said that only when the brain is without love will the eye look and see no beauty.
I become drunk as circumstances dictate.
Somebody else's ignorance is bliss.
I suspect that the word (art) was invented by second-rate intelligences to describe the incomprehensible activities of their betters.