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
the reality is it costs a lot of money.
It is useless, after all, to complain against inexorable reality.
How to know, oh how to know! All is relative ease and facility in orthodoxy, yet how can it be denied that good is in itself undeniable? Absolutes are the most uncertain of all formulations, while the uncertainties are the most real...
You used the word "civilization", which means a set of abstractions, symbols, conventions. Experience tends to be vicarious; emotions are predigested and electrical; ideas become more real than things.
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.
Happiness is fugitive; dissatisfaction and boredom are real.
The story was such that I couldn't make a graceful ending and then make a graceful new beginning. I could have, but I didn't want to. So, it isn't the most graceful way of writing a story. This new story is, I think, is pretty good stuff. I'm pleased with it anyway.
Sometimes some of these little side excursions are useful and I manage to fit them in the book somewhere.
I don't have much vanity. I just know what I do. I just do because I'm capable of doing it and do it easily without any pretentiousness.
So I'll write it, and then I'll find out that I actually wrote something that is utterly useless. You can't use it in the story and it doesn't fit. So I just throw it away. I've done that countless times.
It's just I wanted to get myself in a line of work where I didn't have a boss, where I didn't have to show up any place at any particular time.
It seems to limit you; when you're working in an office, you're a creature in a small cell under somebody's supervision and surveillance.
This flattery has been rather slow in coming. I think all of sudden late in life now I'm getting some credit for what I've done. Which is gratifying, but it's kind of a little late.
I never made lots of money at it, but I sold enough.