Roger Zelazny Quotes (1937-1995)

“"It is you, isn't it, Kalkin? That's your belt. This is your sort of war. Those were your lightnings striking friend and foe alike. You did live, somehow, eh?" "It is I," said Sam, leveling his lance.”

“To struggle against the dreamers who dream ugliness, be they men or gods, cannot but be the will of the Nameless.”

“It is no shame to lose to me, mortal. Even among mythical creatures there are very few who can give a unicorn a good game.”

“Can life be counted upon to limit itself? No. It is the mindless striving of two to become infinity.”

“It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us.”

“There comes a time in the history of all bureaucracies when they must inevitably parody their own functions.”

“Do not preach to me of progress. Change is not desirable for its own sake, but only if it offers improvement.”

“It is no shame to lose to me, mortal. Even among mythical creatures there are very few who can give a unicorn a good game.”

“Lafferty has the power which sets fire behind your eyeballs. There is warmth, illumination, and a certain joy attendant upon the experience. He's good.”

“The worlds through which Philip Dick's characters move are subject to cancellation or revision without notice. Reality is approximately as dependable as a politician's promise.”

“The work ... abounds in literary, historical and mythological allusions. The sensitivities revealed are far-ranging, capable of fine psychological and sociological analysis, and are as responsive to the contemporary as to the traditional... There is no other writer who, dealing with the struggle between life and death on such a fantastically rarefied level can evoke so much hunger for the stuff of living itself.”

“His stories are sunk to the knees in maturity and wisdom, in bravura writing that breaks rules most writers only suspect exist. His concepts are fresh, his attacks bold, his resolutions generally trenchant. Thus leading us inexorably to the conclusion that Roger Zelazny is the reincarnation of Geoffrey Chaucer.”

“Zelazny, telling of gods and wizards, uses magical words as if he himself were a wizard. He reaches into the subconscious and invokes archetypes to make the hair rise on the back of your neck. Yet these archetypes are transmuted into a science fictional world that is as believable — and as awe-inspiring — as the world you now live in.”

“Roger Zelazny died as I completed the first chapter of The Wake and his memorial informed the second chapter.”

“Zelazny likes to develop different systems of magic, but his emphasis is on systems. He feels the magic should be worked out and contain no contradictions. It should run more like science and not be too supernatural in which anything goes. That route leads to magic being a crutch to move the plot along. He also likes to use the mystery plot. He feels that there is an elegance to having a puzzle overlaid on a fantasy or SF novel. The mystery helps build the mythic elements in fantasy, but is also akin to the process of discovery in science.”

“He was a poet, first, last, always. His words sang. He was a storyteller without peer. He created worlds as colorful and exotic and memorable as any our genre has ever seen.”

“He always seemed to come at a subject through a perspective slightly askew, as if he viewed reality through a glass lightly.”