Home > Author > R.A. Lafferty
61 " The seven bad-humored and unfunny devils who eat ourselves and our narratives alive are Pretentiousness, Pomposity, Presumption, Pontificality, Pavoninity or Peacockery, Pornography, and Pride, these seven offenses to all life. They have oozed out from under the iron doors and then they have inflated themselves immeasurably. "
― R.A. Lafferty , It's Down the Slippery Cellar Stairs (Essays on Fantastic Literature 1)
62 " What had dried up was not a well or pool or ocean of physical water. What had dried up was wit, and artistry, and congruence, and enjoyment, and the sparkle of the spirit. What had dried up was creativity in every form... Musicians couldn't improvise. They had nothing left to improvise with. The art of creative lying came to an end. Profanity became tired: it became louder and more in use, but it was repetitious and unoriginal. Pornography similarly lost gusto and increased in stridency. Jokes died out, and intuitions died. Problem-solving was a lost talent. And the roily oil that had made the slide through life so much easier had now lost its slickness and turned into an abrasive. The incredible creativity by which (and only by which) persons had managed to get along with each other at all was gone... At least one-third of the persons in the world had been super-creative in personal relations. If it hadn't been so, then personal relations would have been impossible. "
― R.A. Lafferty
63 " The Children's programs generally sounded interesting, such as ‘How to Be a Werewolf’. Well, how do you be a werewolf? Except that I am no longer a child, I would have attended this program and learned how to be a werewolf, and I would be one now. "
64 " Alien monsters were pleasant and funny. One early and almost forgotten piece of history tells that Adam, in addition to naming all the sub-lunar creatures, also named the nine hundred and ninety-nine species of creatures who had their homes and nests above the moon, on other moons or trabants or asteroids or planets. And after they were named, the super-lunary creatures went back to their own places, with friendly memories of Earth, the ‘naming place’. So we do have nine hundred and ninety-nine alien species, monstrous but friendly, waiting to meet us again. "
65 " All of the real original stories, all of the best stories, were first told by the animals. The bears were superb story-tellers; so were the deep-space geese (they took nine generations to make a migration, laying eggs on the space journey and hatching out of them on the space journey, for the summer-land of their migrations was not on Earth). The brindled cave-cats were very good story-tellers. Among the stories were well-established genre stories. The seals told under-water stories that they learned from river-and-ocean creatures; and the golden weasels, who really came from the moon, told all sorts of space stories. So the Neanderthals, who learned the stories from the animals, had a very good stock of tales. "
66 " The art of story-telling has not been declining from the beginning. It has been declining for only about twelve thousand years. One reason for the decline is a dietary deficiency: the scarcity of Wooly Rhinoceros Meat and of Dire Wolf Meat. And the other reason is the disappearance of good places where good stories may be told. "
67 " Hold! Go no further!” upset people cry out. “You are coming too near to the subject named ‘religion’!”Yes, ‘Religion’ is one of the taboo words that modern science fictioneers may not think nor say, unless they use it to mean something else. The selective speculation which they are allowed will not stretch far enough to allow religion itself, not far enough to see that we have passed the Isthmus and have only to take off our handcuffs and blindfolds to be free. In this, the narrowness, Science Fiction stands where much science stood a hundred years ago and where almost all pseudo-science still stands today. "
68 " You believe, in one of your theories, that we're in control of the world. We aren't. But we have been, and we will be whenever we wish. It's a day you will fear to see, that we come fully awake again. And we do come awake now. We will regain the world. Certain later interlopers have for some time ruled heaven and earth. Now we come back -- ruthlessly." "Don't you believe the others also have rights?" "The others have had the run of their rights long enough. They are the interlopers, and it's time that the ancient line is restored. --Oh, Foley, I misunderstood you completely; that's always the difficulty of conversing with infants. You mean PEOPLE. You mean do people have any rights? Oh no, I don't believe that people have any rights. "
― R.A. Lafferty , Fourth Mansions
69 " The problem of having a life-possible temperature over a fair part of area for a fair part of the time has been solved by Earth by a deep inclination (25° 27' to the perpendicular of the plane of orbit) to give the seasons, by a rapid rotation to give reasonable days and nights, and by an orbit that is only slightly eccentric to act as governor. This latter is very tricky: ask any demiurge who is in the business of making and positioning planets. "
70 " After we were men we were tribal gods. We each have our tribe that we sometimes inspire and that we follow with interest. My own is a diaspora tribe that's older than the Jews and has forgotten its name; sometimes it's called the Intelligentsia. This is a people and a race, though it's forgotten that it is." "It's no wonder that the Intelligentsia is inhibited from becoming intelligent. "
71 " Paul was coursing at fantastic speed towards the area where the little twin stars Rhium and Antirhium revolved around each other. “Hurry,” were his instructions; “they seem of no consequence, but they are the governor of the universe. Somebody is tampering with them.” Paul continued at his impossible speed and arrived at the area. He saw something that nobody had ever seen before, for nobody had ever been so close to them. The two small stars that revolved around each other were, joined together by a long steel chain. It was that which held them in their tight rapid orbits; it was that which made them the governor of the universe. Paul quickly located the trouble. There was a small green creature, with the body of .a monkey and the head of a gargoyle, cutting the chain with a hack-saw, and he had it near cut in two. “Pray that I be not too late!”Paul prayed, and he believed he had made it when the sawyer-broke a blade. But he quickly replaced it with another, stuck his green tongue out at Paul, took three more strokes with the hack-saw, and the chain broke. Then Rhium and Antirhium swung out of their tight orbits, and the whole universe was out of control with its governor broken. Fifty billion billion stars went nova, and then blacked out to nothing. The universe had eaten itself and was gone forever. “I told you to hurry!” the space captain told Paul furiously as he came barreling up. Then the space captain’s face melted like wax and he was gone. “I did hurry,” Paul said. Then his own face melted like wax and he was gone also.“Is it quite finished?” came the voice of old hawk-face Fabian Foreman. “If it is quite finished, then perhaps we can begin to construct a new universe. It’s all right. It worked out well. I meant you to be too late. "
― R.A. Lafferty , Past Master
