Roger Zelazny > Quotes

“I like libraries. It makes me feel comfortable and secure to have walls of words,
beautiful and wise, all around me. I always feel better when I can see that there is
something to hold back the shadows.”
― Roger Zelazny

“Nobody steals books but your friends.”
― Roger Zelazny, The Guns of Avalon

“There's no such thing as civilization. The word just means the art of living in cities.”
― Roger Zelazny, The Great Book of Amber

“Don't wake me for the end of the world unless it has very good special effects.”
― Roger Zelazny

“Death is the only god who comes when you call.”
― Roger Zelazny

“A totally nondenominational prayer: Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that I be forgiven for anything I 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 I may be eligible after the destruction of my 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 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.”
― Roger Zelazny, Creatures of Light and Darkness

“Good-bye and hello, as always.”
― Roger Zelazny, The Courts of Chaos

“No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words.”
― Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light

“For you see, the headwaters of Shit Creek are a cruel and treacherous expanse.”
― Roger Zelazny

“The day of battle dawned pink as the fresh-bitten thigh of a maiden.”
― Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light

“Occasionally, there arises a writing situation where you see an alternative to what you are doing, a mad, wild gamble of a way for handling something, which may leave you looking stupid, ridiculous or brilliant -you just don't know which. You can play it safe there, too, and proceed along the route you'd mapped out for yourself. Or you can trust your personal demon who delivered that crazy idea in the first place.
Trust your demon.”
― Roger Zelazny

“There's really nothing quite like someone's wanting you dead to make you want to go on living.”
― Roger Zelazny, This Immortal

“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, The Great Book of Amber

“Goodbye and hello, as always.”
― Roger Zelazny, The Courts of Chaos

“Love is a negative form of hatred.”
― Roger Zelazny, This Immortal

“I' do not matter. No word matters. But man forgets reality and sometimes remembers words.”
― Roger Zelazny

“Sleep is perhaps the only among life's great pleasures which need not be of short duration.”
― Roger Zelazny, Knight of Shadows

“Why could you not have left me as I was, in the sea of being?"

"Because the world has need of your humility, your piety, your great teaching and your Machiavellian scheming.”
― Roger Zelazny

“Then the one called Raltariki is really a demon?" asked Tak.

"Yes--and no," said Yama, "If by 'demon' you mean a malefic, supernatural creature, possessed of great powers, life span and the ability to temporarily assume virtually any shape--then the answer is no. This is the generally accepted definition, but it is untrue in one respect."

"Oh? And what may that be?"

"It is not a supernatural creature."

"But it is all those other things?"

"Yes."

"Then 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."

"Ah, but it makes a great deal of difference, you see. It is the difference between the unknown and the unknowable, between science and fantasy--it is a matter of essence. The four points of the compass be logic, knowledge, wisdom and the unknown. Some do bow in that final direction. Others advance upon it. To bow before the one is to lose sight of the three. I may submit to the unknown, but never to the unknowable.”
― Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light

“Do you work for the government, any government?”
I pay taxes, which means I work for the government, part of the time. Yes.”
― Roger Zelazny, My Name is Legion

“I'm a lost soul. We do wail.”
― Roger Zelazny, Jack of Shadows

“I walked among Shadows, and found a race of furry creatures, dark and clawed and fanged, reasonably manlike, and about as intelligent as a freshman in the high school of your choice-sorry, kids, but what I mean is they were loyal, devoted, honest, and too easily screwed by bastards like me and my brother. I felt like the dee-jay of your choice.”
― Roger Zelazny, Nine Princes in Amber

“Once a Buddha, always a Buddha, Sam. Dust off some of your old parables. You have about fifteen minutes.'
Sam held out his hand. "Give me some tobacco and a paper.”
― Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light

“The death of an illusion tends to disconcert.”
― Roger Zelazny, This Immortal

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

“To paraphrase Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear, and all those guys, "I wish I had known this some time ago." - Corwin, Sign of the Unicorn”
― Roger Zelazny, Sign of the Unicorn

“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, Isle of the Dead

“Tonight I will suck the marrow from your bones!” it said. “I will dry them and work them most
cunningly into instruments of music! Whenever I play upon them, your spirit will writhe in bodiless
agony!”
“You burn prettily,” I said.”
― Roger Zelazny, The Guns of Avalon

“Time passed slowly, like and old man climbing a hill.”
― Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light

“It is anticipation and recollection that fill the heart -- never the sensation of the moment.”
― Roger Zelazny

“Did you ever look back at some moment in your past and have it suddenly grow so vivid that all the intervening years seemed brief, dreamlike, impersonal—the motions of a May afternoon surrendered to routine?”
― Roger Zelazny, Doorways in the Sand

“Good evening, Lord Corwin,' said the lean, cadaverous figure who rested against a storage rack, smoking his pipe, grinning around it.
Good evening, Roger. How are things in the nether world?'
A rat, a bat, a spider. Nothing much else astir. Peaceful.'
You enjoy this duty?'
He nodded.
I am writing a philosophical romance shot through with elements of horror and morbidity. I work on those parts down here.”
― Roger Zelazny, The Great Book of Amber

“I would never rest until I held vengeance and the throne within my hand, and good night sweet prince to anybody who stood between me and these things.”
― Roger Zelazny, Nine Princes in Amber

“It is a pain in the ass waiting around for someone to try to kill you.”
― Roger Zelazny, Trumps of Doom

“Strygalldwir is my name. Conjure with it and I will eat your heart and liver."

"Conjure with it? I can't even pronounce it, and my cirrhosis would give you indigestion.”
― Roger Zelazny, The Guns of Avalon

“Blood!" I called out.
Give me blood and vengeance this day, my warriors, and you will be remembered in Amber forever!"
And as a man. they raised their weapons and cried out, "Blood!”
― Roger Zelazny, Nine Princes in Amber

“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, Lord of Light

“Ali čovek zaboravlja stvarnost i pamti samo reci. Što je reči više upamtio, to ga pametnijim smatrajunjegovi drugovi. On gleda velike transformacije sveta, ali ih ne vidi onako kako su bile sagledane od prvog čoveka koji se suočio sa stvarnošću.

Radije tražite to Bezimeno u sebi, to što nadolazi dok mu se obraćam. Ono ne opaža moje reči, već realnost u meni, čiji je deo. To je atman, koji čuje mene, a ne moje reči. Sve ostalo je nestvarno. Definisati znači izgubiti. Bezimeno je suština svih stvari. Bezimeno je nesaznatljivo, moćnije čak i od samog Brame. Stvari prolaze, ali suština ostaje.

Snovi bivstva su san u formama. Forme prolaze, nestaju, ali bivstvo ostaje; i sanja nove snove. Čovek tim snovima daje imena i zamišlja da je uhvatio bivstvo samo, a ne zna da samo priziva privide.

PONEKAD, MOŽDA, POJAVI SE SANJAR KOJI JE SVESTAN DA SANJA. ON MOŽDA KONTROLIŠE DELIĆ SUPSTANCE SNA, U STANJU JE DA TOM SUPSTANCOM RASPOLAŽE PO SVOJOJ VOLJI, ILI MOŽDA USPEVA DA SE PONEKAD DELIMIČNO PROBUDI, DOSPEVAJUĆI TAKO DO POVEĆANE SAMOSPOZNAJE. AKO IZABERE PUT SAMOSPOZNAJE, NJEGOVA SLAVA ĆE BITI VELIKA, KROZ SVE VEKOVE ON ĆE SIJATI KAO ZVEZDA. ALI AKO SE, MEĐUTIM, OPREDELI ZA STAZU TANTRI, GDE SE SPAJAJU SAMSARA I NIRVANA, GDE SE SVET SHVATA ALI SE ISTOVREMENO U NJEMU ŽIVI, ON ĆE BITI JEDAN OD MOĆNIH MEĐU SANJARIMA. MOĆ SVOJU ON MOŽE UPOTREBITI ZA ZLO ILI ZA DOBRO.

Živeti u Samsari, međutim, znači biti podložan uticaju moćnih sanjara. Ako oni moć koriste za dobro, nastaju zlatna vremena. Ako je koriste za zlo, nastaju mračna vremena. San se može preobraziti u košmar.

Čovek mora prvo da odradi opterećenja svoje karme, svog mesa, tela, pre nego što dostigne prosvetljenje.

U svetlosti večnih istina, kažu mudraci, patnja je kao ništa; u terminima Samsare, kažu mudraci, ona vodi dobru.

Bezimeno, čiji smo deo svi mi, sanja formu. Koji je najviši atribut ijednoj formi dostupan? Lepota. Bezimeno je, dakle, umetnik. Problem, dakle, nije u oblasti dileme dobro - zlo, nego u estetskoj oblasti. Boriti se protiv onih koji su među sanjarima moćni a koji svoju moć koriste za zlo ili za ružnoću, ne znači boriti se za ono čemu su nas mudraci podučili da je besmisleno u terminima Samsare ili Nirvane, već znači boriti se da san bude sanjan, simetrično, ritmično, sa poentom i kontrapunktom, izbalansirano, tako da postane lep kao umetničko delo.”
― Roger Zelazny, Gospodar svetlosti

“Добре. Още един ден и ние продължаваме да сме живи. Може дори мъничко бяхме помъдрели. Достатъчно, за да осъзнаем, че все още съществуват много неща, които трябва да научим. Да не губим надежда. Това е то.”
― Roger Zelazny, The Hand of Oberon

“It was almost a mystical experience. I do not know how else to put it. My mind outran time as he neared, and it was as though I had an eternity to ponder the approach of this man who was my brother. His garments were filthy, his face blackened, the stump of his right arm raised, gesturing anywhere. The great beast that he rode was striped, black and red, with a wild red mane and tail. But it really was a horse, and its eyes rolled and there was foam at its mouth and its breathing was painful to hear. I saw then that he wore his blade slung across his back, for its haft protruded high above his right shoulder. Still slowing, eyes fixed upon me, he departed the road, bearing slightly toward my left, jerked the reins once and released them, keeping control of the horse with his knees. His left hand went up in a salute-like movement that passed above his head and seized the hilt of his weapon. It came free without a sound, describing a beautiful arc above him and coming to rest in a lethal position out from his left shoulder and slanting back, like a single wing of dull steel with a minuscule line of edge that gleamed like a filament of mirror. The picture he presented was burned into my mind with a kind of magnificence, a certain splendor that was strangely moving. The blade was a long, scythe like affair that I had seen him use before. Only then we had stood as allies against a mutual foe I had begun to believe unbeatable. Benedict had proved otherwise that night. Now that I saw it raised against me I was overwhelmed with a sense of my own mortality, which I had never experienced before in this fashion. It was as though a layer had been stripped from the world and I had a sudden, full understanding of death itself.”
― Roger Zelazny, The Great Book of Amber

“But I recall the springtime of the world as though it were yesterday—those days when we rode together to battle, and those nights when we shook the stars loose from the fresh-painted skies!”
― Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light

“Your woman is gone and your heart is heavy. Words will not lighten the weight, and what is written is written. But let it also be put down that I grieve with you. ~Hasan~”
― Roger Zelazny, This Immortal

“In the State of Denmark there was the odor of decay...”
― Roger Zelazny, Nine Princes in Amber

“I was willing to die fighting, but it was senseless for all these men to go down with me. Perhaps my blood was tainted, despite my power over the Pattern. A true prince of Amber should have had no such qualms. I decided then that my centuries on the Shadow Earth had changed me, softened me perhaps, had done something to me which made me unlike my brothers.”
― Roger Zelazny, Nine Princes in Amber

“You leap too quickly to his defense. It reveals his true attitude, of which he has doubtless made you aware.”
― Roger Zelazny, Nine Princes in Amber

“The columns of mounted men moved forward, passed out through the gates of the Palace of Karma, turned off the roadway and headed up the slope that lay to the southeast of the city of Mahartha, comrades blazing like the dawn at their back.”
― Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light

“...And call me Conrad!”
― Roger Zelazny, This Immortal

“He spent the last second of his life screaming, as the force of Bortan's leap pulped him against the ground, before his head was snatched from his shoulders.
My hellhound had arrived.”
― Roger Zelazny, This Immortal

“P.S. I still dunno if it's art. Go to Hell yourself. ”
― Roger Zelazny, This Immortal

“As I sailed into Shadow, a white bird of my desire came and sat upon my right shoulder, and I wrote a note and tied it to its leg and set it on its way. The note said "I am coming," and it was signed by me.

A black bird of my desire came and sat upon my left shoulder, and I wrote a note and tied it to its leg and sent it off into the west. It said, "Eric- I'll be back," and it was signed: Corwin, Lord of Amber.

A demon wind propelled me east of the sun.”
― Roger Zelazny, Nine Princes in Amber