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Fritz Leiber QUOTES

Fritz Leiber QUOTES

1 " Also, in the dismal Cold Waste, any man treasures illusions, though knowing them almost certainly to be such. "

― Fritz Leiber , Swords Against Wizardry (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser #4)

2 " At that instant the hag's noisy breathing stopped and with it all other sound. Her eyes opened, showing only whites - milky ovals infinitely eerie in the dark root-tangle of her sharp features and stringy hair. The gray tip of her tongue traveled like a large maggot around her lips. "

― Fritz Leiber , Swords Against Wizardry (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser #4)

3 " What matters is that life is good. It has a lovely texture, like some rich cloth or fur, or the petals of flowers, and everything else worthwhile. And that's as true for the last man as the first. "

― Fritz Leiber , A Pail of Air

4 " The dark dangerous forest is still there, my friends. Beyond the space of the astronauts and the astronomers, beyond the dark, tangled regions of Freudian and Jungian psychiatry, beyond the dubious psi-realms of Dr. Rhine, beyond the areas policed by the commissars and priests and motivations-research men, far, far beyond the mad, beat, half-hysterical laughter... the utterly unknown still is and the eerie and ghostly lurk, as much wrapped in mystery as ever. "

― Fritz Leiber

5 " The result is ... that there's no room left in the world for the weird – though plenty for crude, contemptuous, wisecracking, fun-poking imitations of it. "

― Fritz Leiber , Heroes and Horrors

6 " Franz said 'Your picture, Viki, suggests that sense of breaking-up we feel in the modern world. Families, nations, classes, other loyalty groups falling apart. Things changing before you get to know them. Death on the installment plan – or decay by jumps. Instantaneous birth. Something out of nothing. Reality replacing science fiction so fast that you can't tell which is which. Constant sense of deja-vu - 'I was here before, but when, how?' Even the possibility that there's no real continuity between events, just inexplicable gaps. And of course every gap – every crack – means a new perching place for horror. "

― Fritz Leiber

7 " Nations are as equal as so many madmen or drunkards. "

― Fritz Leiber

8 " He who lies artistically, treads closer to the truth than ever he knows. "

― Fritz Leiber

9 " THE ROBOT MEN OF BUBBLE CITY, by Rog Phillips Originally published in Fantastic Adventures, July 1949. Turlogh Hogan pressed the stud that raised the parabolic projector but of its recess in the hull of his ship. The second the light on the panel flashed on, signaling the projector was in operating position, he flicked the relay button that sent the ultra-high frequency current through its opposing coils. "

― Fritz Leiber , The Robot MEGAPACK®: 19 Gear-Grinding Robot Stories!

10 " Fafhrd stopped, again wiped right hand on robe, and held it out. "Name's Fafhrd. Ef ay ef aitch ar dee."

Again the Mouser shook it. "Gray Mouser," he said a touch defiantly, as if challenging anyone to laugh at the sobriquet. "Excuse me, but how exactly do you pronounce that? Faf-hrud?"

"Just Faf-erd. "

― Fritz Leiber , Swords and Deviltry (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser #1)

11 " None can use black magic without straining the soul to the uttermost—and staining it into the bargain. None can inflict suffering without enduring the same. None can send death by spells and sorcery without walking on the brink of death’s own abyss, aye, and dripping his own blood into it. The forces black magic evokes are like two-edged poisoned swords with grips studded with scorpion stings. Only a strong man, leather-handed, in whom hate and evil are very powerful, can wield them, and he only for a space. "

― Fritz Leiber , Swords and Deviltry (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser #1)

12 " The Mouser made a very small parry in carte so that the thrust of the bravo from the east went past his left side by only a hair's breath. He instantly riposted. His adversary, desperately springing back, parried in turn in carte. Hardly slowing, the tip of the Mouser's long, slim sword dropped under that parry with the delicacy of a princess curtsying and then leaped forward and a little upward, the Mouser making an impossibly long-looking lunge for one so small, and went between two scales of the bravo's armored jerkin and between his ribs and through his heart and out his back as if all were angelfood cake. "

― Fritz Leiber , Swords and Deviltry (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser #1)

13 " Oaths are made to be kept only until their purpose be fulfilled," the fluty voice responded. "Every geas is lifted at last, every self-set rule repealed. Otherwise orderliness in life becomes a limitation to growth; discipline, chains; integrity, bondage and evil-doing. You have learned what you can from the world. You have graduated from that huge portion or Nehwon. It now remains that you take up your postgraduate studies in Lankhmar, the highest university of civilized life here. "

― Fritz Leiber , Swords Against Death (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser #2)

14 " Fafhrd, his back to a great oak, had his broadsword out and was holding off two of Rannarsh's henchmen, who were attacking with their shorter weapons. It was a tight spot and the Northerner realized it. He knew that ancient sagas told of heroes who could best four or more men at swordplay. He also knew that such sagas were lies, providing that the hero's opponents were reasonably competent. "

― Fritz Leiber , Swords Against Death (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser #2)

15 " The seven black priests—" Fafhrd muttered.
"The six," the Mouser corrected. "We killed one of them last night."
"Well, the six then," Fafhrd conceded. "They seem angry with us."
"As why shouldn't they be?" the Mouser demanded. "We stole their idol's only eye. Such an act annoys priests tremendously."
It seemed to have more eyes than that one," Fafhrd asserted thoughtfully, "if only it had opened them."
"Thank Aarth it didn't!" the Mouser hissed. "And 'ware that dart!"
Fafhrd hit the dirt—or rather the rock—instantly, and the black dart skirred on the ice ahead.
"I think they're unreasonably angry," Fafhrd asserted, scrambling to his feet.
"Priests always are," the Mouser said philosophically, with a sidewise shudder at the dart's black-crusted point. "

― Fritz Leiber , Swords Against Death (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser #2)

16 " So tell me, giant philosopher, why we're not dukes," the Gray Mouser demanded, unrolling a forefinger from the fist on his knee so that it pointed across the brazier at Fafhrd. "Or emperors, for that matter, or demigods."

"We are not dukes because we're no man's man," Fafhrd replied smugly, settling his shoulders against the stone horse-trough. "Even a duke must butter up a king, and demigods the gods. We butter no one. We go our own way, choosing our own adventure—and our own follies! Better freedom and a chilly road than a warm hearth and servitude."

"There speaks the hound turned out by his last master and not yet found new boots to slaver on," the Mouser retorted with comradely sardonic impudence. "Look you, you noble liar, we've labored for a dozen lords and kings and merchants fat. You've served Movarl across the Inner Sea. I've served the bandit Harsel. We've both served this Glipkerio, whose girl is tied to Ilthmar this same night."

"Those are exception," Fafhrd protested grandly. "And even when we serve, we make the rules. We bow to no man's ultimate command, dance to no wizard's drumming, join no mob, hark to no wildering hate-call. When we draw sword, it's for ourselves alone. "

― Fritz Leiber , Swords in the Mist

17 " I wonder if all the people who talk so glibly of time-traveling have understood what it means: namely, that past and future ages are just as real as the present. Else there would be no places to travel to. And then what keeps us from time-traveling? Only the human mind, the human consciousness, which is bound down to one tiny bit of time, the present moment. But if we could ever get outside the present moment, we would see the world in four dimensions, the fourth being time. We would see ourselves, stretching out in a continuous line from the cradle to the grave…. "

― Fritz Leiber , The Dealings of Daniel Kesserich

18 " I sometimes think that what civilized serenity the British people possess, and small but real ability to smile at themselves, is chiefly due to their good luck in having had William Shakespeare born one of their company. "

― Fritz Leiber , Four Ghosts in Hamlet

19 " The dark dangerous forest is still there, my friends. Beyond the space of the astronauts and the astronomers, beyond the dark, tangled regions of Freudian and Jungian psychiatry, beyond the dubious psi-realms of Dr. Rhine, beyond the areas policed by commissars and priests and motivations-research men, far, far beyond the mad, beat, half-hyserical laughter...the utterly unknown still is and the eerie and ghostly lurk, as much wrapped in mystery as ever.

A Bit of the Dark World "

― Fritz Leiber , Night Monsters

20 " The “Howard” in the entry had to be Howard Phillips Lovecraft, that twentieth-century puritanic Poe from Providence, with his regrettable but undeniable loathing of the immigrant swarms he felt were threatening the traditions and monuments of his beloved New England and the whole Eastern seaboard. (And hadn’t Lovecraft done some ghost-writing for a man with a name like Castries? Caster? Carswell?) "

― Fritz Leiber , Our Lady of Darkness