The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth Quotes

“People never pay attention to weather reports; this, I believe, is a constant factor in man's psychological makeup, stemming probably from an ancient distrust of the shaman. You want them to be wrong. If they're right, then they're somehow superior, and this is even more uncomfortable than getting wet.

"This Moment of the Storm”
― Roger Zelazny, The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth

“Man is the sum total of everything he has done, wishes to do or not to do, and wishes he had done, or hadn't.”
― Roger Zelazny, The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth

“I learned that man is a reasoning animal,
man is the one who lacks,
is greater than beasts but less than angels,
man is the one watching himself watch himself doing things he knows are absurd,
man is the culture transmitting animal,
man is the spirit that aspires, affirms, loves,
the one who uses tools, buries his dead, devises religions and the one who tries to define himself.
...
Man is the sum total of everything he has done, wishes to do or not to do, and wishes he had done, or hadn't.”
― Roger Zelazny, The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth

“I watched until the sizzlecloud drew its legs up into itself, hung like a burning cocoon, then died like an ember retreating into ash. Suddenly, it was very dark and there was only the rain. Sunday”
― Roger Zelazny, The Doors Of His Face, The Lamps Of His Mouth

“All progress demands payment. These are the growing pains of which you speak, not the final results." "Fool! There is no such thing as progress! Not as you see it! What good are all the machines and ideas you unloose in their cultures, if you do not change the men themselves?”
― Roger Zelazny, The Doors Of His Face, The Lamps Of His Mouth

“Raping a planet involves considerable expense. Enormous blasters and slicers and sluicers and refiners are required to reduce a world back almost to a state of primal chaos, and then to extract from it its essential (i.e., commercially viable) ingredients. The history books may tell you of strip-mining on the mother planet, back in ancient times. Well, the crude processes employed then were similar in emphasis and results, but the operations were considerably smaller in size.”
― Roger Zelazny, The Doors Of His Face, The Lamps Of His Mouth

“That was the first time in my life that I knew the meaning of despair. I read, I worked, I drank, I whored, but came the morning after and I was always me, by myself.”
― Roger Zelazny, The Doors Of His Face, The Lamps Of His Mouth