text:
User talk:72.24.74.222

This IP address was used to create an article, "Frank Tyger", that had been deleted after a vote. This is against Wikiquote policy. If this activity is continued, this address may be blocked from editing Wikiquote. Thank you for your cooperation. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 03:27, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: User talk:72.24.74.222


text:
User talk:Addps4cat~enwikiquote

~ MosheZadka (Talk) 06:16, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Your account will be renamed
Hello,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users like cross-wiki notifications. These changes will mean you have the same account name everywhere. This will let us give you new features that will help you edit and discuss better, and allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the side-effects of this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis. See the announcement for more information.

Unfortunately, your account clashes with another account also called Addps4cat. To make sure that both of you can use all Wikimedia projects in future, we have reserved the name Addps4cat~enwikiquote that only you will have. If you like it, you don't have to do anything. If you do not like it, you can pick out a different name.

Your account will still work as before, and you will be credited for all your edits made so far, but you will have to use the new account name when you log in.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Yours, Keegan Peterzell Community Liaison, Wikimedia Foundation 23:16, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Renamed
 This account has been renamed as part of single-user login finalisation. If you own this account you can |log in using your previous username and password for more information. If you do not like this account's new name, you can choose your own using this form after logging in: . -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 05:41, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:Addps4cat~enwikiquote


text:
The Chronicles of Amber

The Chronicles of Amber is a popular fantasy series (consisting of ten books) by Roger Zelazny.

Nine Princes in Amber (1970)

 * All page numbers from the mass market paperback edition published by Avon Books ISBN 0-380-01430-0

 * Some natural skepticism as to the purity of all human motives came and sat upon my chest.
 * Chapter I (p. 5)

 * I was garbed all in white, the color of Moby Dick and vanilla ice cream. Ugly.
 * Chapter I (p. 8)

 * I saw the Old Moon with the New Moon in her arms, hovering above a row of poplars. The grass was silvery and sparkled. The night was bargaining weakly with the sun.
 * Chapter I (p. 8)

 * You will answer my questions. Obviously you consider me dangerous. You may be right.
 * Chapter I (p. 10)

 * Anyone who tried to hurt me, to use me, did so at his own peril and now he would receive his due, whoever he was, this one. I felt a strong desire to kill, to destroy whoever had been responsible, and I knew it was not the first time in my life that I had felt this thing, and I knew, too, that I had followed through on it in the past. More than once.
 * Chapter II (p. 14)

 * I gathered I wasn’t very well liked. Somehow, the feeling pleased me.
 * Chapter II (p. 21)

 * So, since it seemed I had the run of the house, I decided I’d return to the library and see what I could learn there. Besides, I like libraries. It makes me feel comfortable and secure to have walls of words, beautiful and wise, all around me. I always feel better when I can see that there is something to hold back the shadows.
 * Chapter III (p. 25)

 * I knew that there wasn’t much brotherly love lost between the two of us. But I knew that on the one hand he was nobody’s fool; he was resourceful, shrewd, strangely sentimental over the damnedest things; and on the other hand, his word wasn’t worth the spit behind it, and he’d probably sell my corpse to the medical school of his choice if he could get much for it.
 * Chapter III (p. 33)

 * Of all my relations, I like sex the best and Eric the least.
 * Chapter IV (p. 43)

 * The blood billowed above them, and I suddenly realized I had known mad, sad, bad Vincent Van Gogh, and it was really too bad that he couldn't have painted this.
 * Chapter V (p. 78)

 * I had gained a piece of myself. I saw the paper skins and the knobby, stick-like bones of the dead of Auschwitz. I had been present at Nuremberg, I knew. I heard the voice of Stephen Spender reciting "Vienna," and I saw Mother Courage cross the stage on the night of a Brecht premiere. I saw the rockets leap up from the stained hard places, Peenemunde, Vandenberg, Kennedy, Kyzyl Kum in Kazakhstan, and I touched with my hands the Wall of China. We were drinking beer and wine, and Shaxpur said he was drunk and went off to puke. I entered the green forests of the Western Reserve and took three scalps one day. I hummed a tune as we marched along and it caught on. It became "Auprès de ma blonde." I remembered, I remembered ... my life within the Shadow place its inhabitants had called the Earth.
 * Chapter V (p. 87)

 * Amber was the greatest city which had ever existed or ever would exist. Amber had always been and always would be, and every other city, everywhere, every other city that existed was but a reflection of a shadow of some phase of Amber.
 * Chapter V (p. 90)

 * “What makes you better than the rest of us, and more fit to rule?” “The fact that I was able to occupy the throne,” he replied. “Try and take it.”
 * Chapter V (p. 96)

 * The land was known as Avernus, and the assembled troops were not quite men. I reviewed them the following morning, walking behind Bleys. They were all of them around seven feet in height, had very red skins and little hair, catlike eyes, and six-digited hands and feet. They wore garments that looked as light as silk, but were woven of something else and were mainly gray or blue in color. Each bore two short blades, hooked at the end. Their ears were pointed and their many fingers clawed. The climate was warm and the colors bewildering, and everyone thought we were gods.
 * Chapter VI (p. 104)

 * I walked among Shadows, and found a race of furry creatures, dark and clawed and fanged, reasonably man-like, and about as intelligent as a freshman in the high school of your choice—sorry, kids, but what I mean is they were loyal, devoted, honest, and too easily screwed by bastards like me and my brother. I felt like the dee-jay of your choice.
 * Chapter VI (p. 106)

 * There is Shadow and there is Substance, and this is the root of all things. Of Substance, there is only Amber, the real city, upon the real Earth, which contains everything. Of Shadow, there is an infinitude of things. Every possibility exists somewhere as a Shadow of the real. Amber, by its very existence, has cast such in all directions. And what may one say of it beyond? Shadow extends from Amber to Chaos, and all things are possible within it. There are only three ways of traversing it, and each of them is difficult.
 * Chapter VI (pp. 113-114)

 * “Supposing I give you my word that I won’t do this thing?” “Any man would be forsworn to gain a kingdom,” said Eric.
 * Chapter VI (p. 122)

 * As I stood on a hilltop and the evening began around me, it seemed as if I looked out over every camp I had ever stood within, stretching on and on over the miles and the centuries without end. I suddenly felt tears come into my eyes, for the men who are not like the lords of Amber, living but a brief span and passing into dust, that so many of them must meet their ends upon the battlefields of the world.
 * Chapter VI (pp. 127-128)

 * My sight was returning to me, that's what it meant—that lovely patch of brightness, off somewhere to my right.
 * Chapter IX (p. 158)

 * I had done this thing with my curse. I had transformed the peaceful Valley of Garnath into what it now represented: it was a symbol of my hate for Eric and for all those others who had stood by and let him get away with his power grab, let him blind me. I didn't like the looks of that forest, and as I stared at it I realized how my hate had objectified itself. I knew it because it was a part of me.
 * Chapter X (p. 173)

The Guns of Avalon (1972)
All page numbers from the mass market paperback edition published by Avon Books ISBN 0-380-00083-0

 * Amber casts an infinity of shadows. A child of Amber may walk among them, and such was my heritage. You may call them parallel worlds if you wish, alternate universes if you would, the products of a deranged mind if you care to. I call them shadows, as do all who possess the power to walk among them. We select a possibility and we walk until we reach it. So, in a sense, we create it. Let’s leave it at that for now.
 * Chapter 1 (p. 12)

 * "Mon Dieu!" he said. "I am pleased never to have had you for an enemy. Are you certain you are not the Devil?" "Yeah, sure," I said. "Don't you smell the brimstone? And my right hoof is killing me." He actually sniffed a couple times before he chuckled, which hurt my feelings a bit.
 * Chapter 1 (p. 16)

 * Thus did I bear Sir Lancelot du Lac to the Keep of Ganelon, whom I trusted like a brother. That is to say, not at all.
 * Chapter 1 (p. 20)

 * "I am told it began as a tiny ring of toadstools, far to the west. A child was found dead in its center, and the man who found her—her father—died of convulsions several days later. The spot was immediately said to be accursed. It grew quickly in the months that followed, until it was half a league across. The grasses darkened and shone like metal within it, but did not die. The trees twisted and their leaves blackened. They swayed when there was no wind, and bats danced and darted among them. In the twilight, strange shapes could be seen moving—always within the Circle, mind you—and there were lights, as of small fires, throughout the night. The Circle continued to grow, and those who lived near it fled—mostly. A few remained. It was said that those who remained had struck some bargain with the dark things. And the Circle continued to widen, spreading like the ripple from a rock cast into a pond. More and more people remained, living, within it. I have spoken with these people, fought with them, slain them. It is as if there is something dead inside them all. Their voices lack the thrust and dip of men chewing over their words and tasting them. They seldom do much with their faces, but wear them like death masks.
 * Ganelon explaining the origins of the Dark Circle of Lorraine, Chapter 1 (p. 33)

 * “Good fortune to us all,” said Ganelon. “I know no gods, but if any care to be with us, I welcome them.”
 * Chapter 3 (p. 58)

 * “I have been sitting here wondering why I no longer hate you.” “Have you reached any conclusions?” “No, not really. Maybe it’s because we’re a lot alike. I don’t know.”
 * Chapter 3 (p. 63)

 * In my heart, there was something like a bit of joy that I had undone at least a small portion of the rottenness I had wrought. Evil? Hell, I’ve done more of it than most men, but I had picked up a conscience too, somewhere along the way, and I let it enjoy one of its rare moments of satisfaction.
 * Chapter 3 (p. 66)

 * I sometime fancy myself an evil which exists to oppose other evils.
 * Chapter 3 (p. 67)

 * If the forays of chaos kept occurring on my desire-walk through Shadow, then they were bound up with the nature of the desire and would have to be dealt with, one way or another, sooner or later. They could not be avoided. Such was the nature of the game, and I could not complain because I had laid down the rules.
 * Chapter 4 (p. 74)

 * Only a fool does not fear a genuine power that he does not understand.
 * Chapter 4 (p. 94)

 * There was that air of vitality about her which is attractive in ways different from mere comeliness.
 * Chapter 5 (p. 105)

 * Never trust a relative. It is far worse than trusting strangers. With a stranger there is a possibility that you might be safe.
 * Chapter 5 (p. 117)

 * I smiled. "Of course it does not apply to me. I am the soul of honor, kindness, mercy, and goodness. Trust me in all things."
 * Chapter 5 (p. 117)

 * One does not live as long as I have lived without achieving that quality of consciousness which strips naïve feelings as they occur and is generally loathe to participate in the creation of sentimentality.
 * Chapter 6 (p. 125)

 * Why had no one ever come up with a way to change the basic nature of man? Even the erasure of all my memories and a new life in a new world had resulted in the same old Corwin. If I were not happy with what I was it could be a proposition worthy of despair.
 * Chapter 6 (pp. 135-136)

 * While I had often said that I wanted to die in bed, what I really meant was that in my old age I wanted to be stepped on by an elephant while making love.
 * Chapter 6 (p. 136)

 * We had come into a lovely afternoon in a beautiful place. It was a shame to dampen it with blood, particularly if it might be my blood.
 * Chapter 7 (p. 172)

 * It was almost a mystical experience. I do not know how else to put it. My mind outran time as he neared, and it was as though I had an eternity to ponder the approach of this man who was my brother. His garments were filthy, his face blackened, the stump of his right arm raised, gesturing anywhere. The great beast that he rode was striped, black and red, with a wild red mane and tail. But it really was a horse, and its eyes rolled and there was foam at its mouth and its breathing was painful to hear. I saw then that he wore his blade slung across his back, for its haft protruded high above his right shoulder. Still slowing, eyes fixed upon me, he departed the road, bearing slightly toward my left, jerked the reins once and released them, keeping control of the horse with his knees. His left hand went up in a salute-like movement that passed above his head and seized the hilt of his weapon. It came free without a sound, describing a beautiful arc above him and coming to rest in a lethal position out from his left shoulder and slanting back, like a single wing of dull steel with a minuscule line of edge that gleamed like a filament of mirror. The picture he presented was burned into my mind with a kind of magnificence, a certain splendor that was strangely moving. The blade was a long, scythe-like affair that I had seen him use before. Only then we had stood as allies against a mutual foe I had begun to believe unbeatable. Benedict had proved otherwise that night. Now that I saw it raised against me I was overwhelmed with a sense of my own mortality, which I had never experienced before in this fashion. It was as though a layer had been stripped from the world and I had a sudden, full understanding of death itself.
 * Chapter 7 (pp. 175-176)

 * Confidence is a fine thing. Then there is foolhardiness...
 * Chapter (p. 188)

 * The ultimate arbiter, cash, convinced him we would do it my way.
 * Chapter (p. 188)

 * Nobody steals books but your friends.
 * Chapter (p. 196)

 * You make the mistake, Eric, of considering yourself necessary. The graveyards are filled with men who thought they could not be replaced.
 * Chapter (pp. 198-199)

 * I had never seen a non-decorative wyvern before, but then I had never felt any great desire to go looking for one.
 * Chapter (p. 208)

 * I could not hate thee, Eric, so much, loved I not Amber more.
 * Chapter (p. 210)

Sign of the Unicorn (1975)
All page numbers from the mass market paperback edition published by Avon Books ISBN 0-380-00831-9

 * Of troubles I considered myself amply possessed. But those who have do seem to get. Some spiritual form of compound interest, I suppose.
 * Corwin, Chapter 1 (p. 7)

 * While sex heads a great number of lists, we all have other things we like to do in between. With me, Corwin, it's drumming, being up in the air, and gambling—in no special order. Well, maybe soaring has a little edge—in gliders, balloons, and certain variations—but mood has a lot to do with that too, you know. I mean, ask me another time and I might say one of the others. Depends on what you want most at the moment.
 * Random, Chapter 2 (p. 15)

 * Dad was still around, and when I noticed that he was getting into one of his grumpy moods, I decided it was time to take a walk. A long one. I had often noticed that his fondness for me tended to increase as an inverse function of my proximity.
 * Random, Chapter 2 (p. 15)

 * So Childe Random to the dark tower came, yeah, gun in one hand, blade in the other.
 * Random, Chapter 2 (p. 22; a humorous nod to Robert Browning's famous poem Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came)

 * It is never good to assume that you have taken care of everything when you are in a hurry.
 * Random, Chapter 2 (p. 27)

 * I played the Shadow game we all learned as children. Pass some obstruction—a scrawny tree, a stand of stone—and have the sky be different from one side to the other. Gradually I restored familiar constellations. I knew that I would be climbing down a different mountain from the one I ascended.
 * Random, Chapter 2 (p. 32)

 * You have to explore every contingency if you want to keep winning the survival game.
 * Random, Chapter 2 (p. 37)

 * I brought my emotions to heel. One by one, you must deal with those things that come to hand, I told myself. That is all. Divorce the feelings from the speculations, or at least provide for separate maintenance.
 * Random, Chapter 2 (p. 40)

 * "To paraphrase Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear, and all those other guys," I said, "I wish I had known this some time ago."
 * Corwin, Chapter 3 (p. 43)

 * We drank a silent toast to futility.
 * Corwin, Chapter 3 (p. 44)

 * For a moment I regarded the Pattern—a shining mass of curved lines that tricked the eye as it tried to trace them—imbedded there, huge, in the floor's slick blackness. It had given me power over Shadow, it had restored most of my memory. It would also destroy me in an instant if I were to essay it improperly. What gratitude the prospect did arouse in me was therefore not untinged with fear. It was a splendid and cryptic old family heirloom which belonged right where it was, in the cellar.
 * Corwin, Chapter 3 (p. 50)

 * Most things depend on other things. This thing is no different.
 * Corwin, Chapter 4 (p. 58)

 * If you herald some turn in our fortunes, if you bring us some measure of grace—thanks, unicorn," I said. "And even if you do not, thanks for the brightness of your company at a dark time."
 * Corwin, Chapter 5 (p. 80)

 * Life's incessant ceremonies leap everlasting, humans spring eternal on hope's breast, and frying pans without fires are often far between.
 * Corwin, Chapter 6 (p. 81)

 * The others glanced our way as she appeared and she hit them all with that smile, like the Mona Lisa with a machine gun, turning slowly.
 * Corwin, speaking of Deirdre, Chapter 6 (p. 82)

 * “Your words are ill-considered,” I said. “Not so. I considered every one of them,” he answered. “We spend so much time lying to one another that I decided it might be amusing to say what I really felt. Just to see whether anyone noticed.”
 * Corwin and Julian, Chapter 7 (p. 98)

 * I, of course, am innocent of all but malice.
 * Fiona, Chapter 7 (p. 114)

 * Former friends make the worst enemies.
 * Random, Chapter 7 (p. 118)

 * Out of every life a little blood must spill.
 * Corwin, Chapter 8 (p. 121)

 * But I wonder... I've a peculiar feeling that I may never see you again. It is as if I were one of those minor characters in a melodrama who gets shuffled offstage without ever learning how things turn out.
 * Bill Roth (a minor character who eventually does learn how things turn out), Chapter 8 (p. 139)

 * If blood be the price of admiralty, I’ve just bought me a naval commission.
 * Corwin, Chapter 9 (p. 145)

 * How to put simply that which is not a simple thing...? Solipsism, I suppose, is where we have to begin—the notion that nothing exists but the self, or, at least, that we cannot truly be aware of anything but our own existence and experience. I can find, somewhere, off in Shadow, anything I can visualize. Any of us can. This, in good faith, does not transcend the limits of the ego. It may be argued, and in fact has, by most of us, that we create the shadows we visit out of the stuff of our own psyches, that we alone truly exist, that the shadows we traverse are but projections of our own desires.... Whatever the merits of this argument, and there are several, it does go far toward explaining much of the family's attitude toward people, places, and things outside of Amber. Namely, we are toymakers and they, our playthings—sometimes dangerously animated, to be sure; but this, too, is part of the game. We are impresarios by temperament, and we treat one another accordingly. While solipsism does tend to leave one slightly embarrassed on questions of etiology, one can easily avoid the embarrassment by refusing to admit the validity of the questions. Most of us are, as I have often observed, almost entirely pragmatic in the conduct of our affairs. Almost... Yet—yet there is a disturbing element in the picture. There is a place where the shadows go mad.... When you purposely push yourself through layer after layer of Shadow, surrendering—again, purposely—a piece of your understanding every step of the way, you come at last to a mad place beyond which you cannot go. Why do this? In hope of an insight, I'd say, or a new game ... But when you come to this place, as we all have, you realize that you have reached the limit of Shadow or the end of yourself—synonymous terms, as we had always thought. Now, though... Now I know that it is not so, now as I stand, waiting, without the Courts of Chaos, telling you what it was like, I know that it is not so.
 * Corwin, Chapter 10 (pp. 164-165)

 * "Why have we been brought here and shown this thing?" "It does not correspond to the true state of affairs," I said. "It is the true state of affairs." Ganelon turned toward us. "On that shadow Earth we visited—where you had spent so many years—I heard a poem about two roads that diverged in a wood," he said. "It ends, 'I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.' When I heard it, I thought of something you had once said—'All roads lead to Amber'—and I wondered then, as I do now, at the difference the choice may make, despite the end's apparent inevitability to those of your blood." "You know?" I said. "You understand?" "I think so." He nodded, then pointed. "That is the real Amber down there, isn't it?" "Yes," I said. "Yes, it is."
 * Random, Ganelon, and Corwin, Chapter 11 (p. 192; closing words)

The Hand of Oberon (1976)
All page numbers from the mass market paperback edition published by Avon Books ISBN 0-380-01664-8

 * It was your perceptiveness rather than the conclusion itself which stunned me so.
 * Chapter 1 (p. 10)

 * About a week ago, brother Caine was murdered, under conditions arranged to show me as the culprit. The fact that I had slain his slayer was hardly satisfactory evidence of my innocence, in that the guy was necessarily in no condition to talk about it.
 * Chapter 2 (p. 27)

 * [A] man should have the right to lead his own life without the meddling of relatives, no matter how well-intentioned.
 * Chapter 3 (p. 40)

 * As I saw it, he owed me nothing now, nor I him—if one keeps a scoreboard tally on such matters. Therefore, it was friendship alone that bound us, a stronger thing than bygone debts and points of honor: in other words, a thing which gave him the right to bug me on matters such as this, where I might have told even Random to go to hell once I had made up my mind. I realized I should not be irritated when everything that he said was tendered in good faith.
 * Chapter 3 (p. 45)

 * I closed my eyes, closed them to join her in darkness, to recall for a brief while the world where other messages than light waves took precedence.
 * Chapter 4 (p. 56)

 * Another day and we’re still alive. Maybe even a trifle wiser. Wise enough to realize there are many more things we still need to know.
 * Chapter 4 (p. 58)

 * "Good evening, Lord Corwin," said the lean, cadaverous figure who rested against a storage rack, smoking his pipe, grinning around it. "Good evening, Roger. How are things in the nether world?" "A rat, a bat, a spider. Nothing much else astir. Peaceful." "You enjoy this duty?" He nodded. "I am writing a philosophical romance shot through with elements of horror and morbidity. I work on those parts down here." "Fitting, fitting," I said.
 * Chapter 4, (p. 60)

 * "Anything you like. Have you any preferences? My flight from Chaos to this small sudden island in the sea of night? My meditations upon the abyss? The revelation of the Pattern in a jewel hung round the neck of a unicorn? My transcription of the design by lightning, blood, and lyre while our fathers raged baffled, too late come to call me back while the poem of fire ran that first route in my brain, infecting me with the will to form? Too late! Too late... Possessed of the abominations born of the disease, beyond their aid, their power, I planned and built, captive of my new self. Is that the tale you'd hear again? Or rather I tell you of its cure?" My mind spun at the implications he had just scattered by the fistful. I could not tell whether he spoke literally or metaphorically or was simply sharing paranoid delusions, but the things that I wanted to hear, had to hear, were things closer to the moment. So, regarding the shadowy image of myself from which that ancient voice emerged, "Tell me of its cure," I said.
 * Chapter 5 (pp. 66-67)

 * I could not be truly harmed because the Pattern protects me, and who but I could harm the Pattern? A beautiful closed system, it seemed, its weakness totally shielded by its strength. ... My blood, with which I drew it, could deface it. But it took me ages to realize that the blood of my blood could also do this thing.
 * Chapter 5 (p. 67)

 * I pointed Grayswandir at his eyes. "Talk is cheap," I said. "Whiskey costs money."
 * Chapter 6 (p. 81)

 * When that many questions arise from a single event the answer is seldom obtainable by pure logic. I had to sort out the possibilities though, to have something to reach for when more facts did turn up.
 * Chapter 9 (p. 113)

 * “You seem to have everything figured. You surprised me, moving so fast.” “I’ve had a lot of time on my hands recently, which can be a bad thing unless you use it for thinking. So I did.”
 * Chapter 12 (p. 171)

 * If I’d the mind, a few more steps would send me along that celestial escalator into the place of dreams made real, walking neuroses and dubious prophecy, into a moonlit city of ambiguous wish fulfillment, twisted time, and pallid beauty.
 * Chapter 13 (p. 175)

 * To be honest, it had to be a form of madness, to have so much and to strive so bitterly for just a little more, for a bit of an edge over the others.
 * Chapter 13 (p. 177)

 * Like most such questions, the benefit of these was in the asking, not the answering.
 * Chapter 13 (p. 177)

 * It changed nothing to run a posthumous psychoanalysis. Acts and their consequences are the things by which our fellows judge us. Anything else, and all that you get is a cheap feeling of moral superiority by thinking how you would have done something nicer if it had been you.
 * Chapter 13 (p. 186)

The Courts of Chaos (1978)
All page numbers from the mass market paperback edition published by Avon Books ISBN 0-380-47175-2

 * I looked back once to the empty place where my dream had come true. Such is the stuff.
 * Chapter 1 (p. 14)

 * It was realized long ago that the two kingdoms can never be merged, or one destroyed, without also disrupting all the processes that lie in flux between us. Total stasis or complete chaos would be the result.
 * Chapter 2 (p. 17)

 * Premonitions played tag in the grottoes of my mind, none of which I would have cared to take to lunch.
 * Chapter 2 (p. 31)

 * I have run into this difficulty with Scripture in the past. It tells you enough to get interested, but never enough to be of any immediate use. It is as though the author gets his kicks by tantalizing.
 * Chapter 5 (p. 53)

 * There is a time for subtlety and a time for brute force. I was both angry and in a hurry, so the decision was made.
 * Chapter 5 (pp. 54-55)

 * Sometimes it's damned hard to tell the dancer from the dance.
 * Chapter 5 (p. 61)

 * Do we make the Shadow worlds? Or are they there, independent of us, awaiting our footfalls? Or is there an unfairly excluded middle? Is it a matter of more or less, rather than either-or? A dry chuckle arose suddenly as I realized that I might never know the answer for certain.
 * Chapter 6 (p. 63)

 * “He is groping after something,” he went on, “but proceeding incorrectly by holding the world responsible for his own failings.”
 * Chapter 7 (p. 79)

 * “I can see that you have a lot to unlearn.” “If you are talking about my vulgar instinct for survival, forget it.”
 * Chapter 7 (p. 80)

 * The fact that you find consensus reality barren tells me more about you than it does about that state of affairs.
 * Chapter 7 (p. 81)

 * “You are not so blind that you deny the Absolute, the beginning and end of everything?” “It is not indispensable to a liberal education.”
 * Chapter 7 (pp. 81-82)

 * ...And, as the Pattern in Rebma had helped to restore my faded memories, so this one I was now striving to create stirred and elicited the smell of the chestnut trees, of the wagonloads of vegetables moving through the dawn toward the Halles.... I was not in love with anyone in particular at the time, though there were many girls—Yvettes and Mimis and Simones, their faces merge—and it was spring in Paris, with Gipsy bands and cocktails at Louis'.... I remembered, and my heart leaped with a kind of Proustian joy while Time tolled about me like a bell.... And perhaps this was the reason for the recollection, for this joy seemed transmitted to my movements, informed my perceptions, empowered my will....
 * Chapter 9 (p. 93)

 * To have come this close, passing through everything that I had, and then to fail here.... It made me want to cry “Injustice!” though I knew the universe did not run in accordance with my notions of equity.
 * Chapter 10 (p. 100)

 * My children, I cannot say that I am entirely pleased with you, but I suppose this works both ways.
 * Chapter 11 (p. 113)

 * I felt that I had done my duty. Nothing drove me now. I had run out of causes and was as close as I might ever be to peace. With all this behind me, I felt that if I had to die now, it was all right. I would not protest quite so loudly as I would have at any other time.
 * Chapter 13 (p. 137)

 * I wish that you had never been born and, failing that, that you had died sooner. Enough! It diminishes me to reflect so. Be dead and trouble my thinking no more.
 * Chapter 14 (p. 140)

 * Good-bye and hello, as always.
 * Chapter 14 (p. 142; closing words)

Trumps of Doom (1985)
All page numbers from the mass market paperback edition published by Avon Books ISBN 0-380-89635-4

 * It was a pain in the ass waiting around for someone to try to kill you. But it was April 30, and of course it would happen as it always did.
 * Chapter 1 (p. 1; opening words)

 * “There’s nothing to any of it,” he said. “There are an infinite number of ways of lying to yourself, into rationalizing things into something they are not. I guess that I wanted magic, and there is no real magic in the world.”
 * Chapter 2 (p. 23)

 * “Power is like money,” I said. “You can usually get it if you’re competent and it’s the only thing you want in life.”
 * Chapter 3 (p. 38)

 * “I’m talking about the meaning of life. You know that.” I shook my head. “Only a fool believes that life has but one meaning,” I said.
 * Chapter 3 (p. 38)

 * Why couldn’t you want a divorce like any sensible young man?
 * Chapter 6 (p. 83)

 * When inspiration is silent reason tires quickly.
 * Chapter 6 (p. 108)

 * She pouted slightly for a moment, then released my arm. “Now you know what an absolute monarchy is,” she explained to Bill. “You can see how power corrupts.” “I was corrupt before I had power,” Random said, “and rich is better.”
 * Chapter 7 (p. 113)

 * I shook out my cloak and brushed myself off. I traveled for perhaps half an hour then, leaving the place far behind me, before I halted and took my breakfast in a hot, bleak valley smelling faintly of sulfur. As I was finishing, I heard a crashing noise. A horned and tusked purple thing went racing along the ridge to my right pursued by a hairless orange-skinned creature with long claws and a forked tail. Both were wailing in different keys. I nodded. It was just one damned thing after another.
 * Chapter 9 (p. 166)

 * “Time,” he said. “There’s always either too much time or not enough.”
 * Chapter 9 (p. 171)

Blood of Amber (1986)
All page numbers from the mass market paperback edition published by Avon Books ISBN 0-380-89636-2

 * Life is full of doors that don’t open when you knock, equally spaced amid those that open when you don’t want them to.
 * Chapter 2 (p. 24)

 * Changing from something nominally human to something rare and strange—perhaps monstrous to some, perhaps frightening—and then back again is a concept some may find repugnant. They shouldn’t. We all of us do it every day in many different ways, don’t we?
 * Chapter 3 (p. 41)

 * We never used to word “love,” though it must have run through her mind on occasion, as it did through mine. It was, I suppose, that I didn’t love her enough to trust her, and then it was too late.
 * Chapter 4 (p. 57)

 * And what did she offer in its place? Airy nothings and classified motives... Which could well mean she was telling the truth. Disdaining the use of a workable lie and offering something more cumbersome in its place would seem the mark of genuine honesty.
 * Chapter 5 (pp. 97-98; ellipsis in original)

 * She dismounted and let her horse nibble a few blades of grass. I did the same. Dismounted, that is.
 * Chapter 6 (p. 106)

 * I do not like being manipulated or coerced. My reflexive attempt to do something other than what is desired of me then feels forced also.
 * Chapter 7 (pp. 133-134)

 * I had a feeling that I already had the answer but that I would be unable to realize it until I had formulated the proper question.
 * Chapter 8 (p. 152)

 * You wish perhaps to discuss the philosophy of revenge with me now?
 * Chapter 10 (p. 176)

 * This was my father’s tomb—well, cenotaph—built long ago when he had been presumed dead. It had amused him considerably to be able to visit the place later on. Now, of course, its status might well have changed. It could be the real thing now. Would this cancel the irony or increase it?
 * Chapter 10 (p. 187)

 * As I straightened my legs and strained upward with even greater exertion, I wondered how many people fail in robust undertakings because of sudden lower back problems. I guess they’re the ones you don’t hear about.
 * Chapter 11 (p. 202)

 * So, “What do you want, anyway?” I called out. Immediately, that metallic voice replied, “Your blood, your soul, your mind and your body.” “What about my stamp collection,” I hollered back. “Do I get to keep the First Day Covers?”
 * Chapter 11 (p. 206)

 * “Another relative coming to visit,” Random said. “Why couldn’t have been an only child?”
 * Chapter 12 (p. 214)

Sign of Chaos (1987)
All page numbers from the mass market paperback edition published by Avon Books ISBN 0-380-89637-0

 * If you had a choice between the ability to detect falsehood and the ability to discover truth, which one would you take?
 * Chapter 3 (p. 41)

 * We will learn whatever we can, of course. Power is power, and represents a threat until it is understood.
 * Chapter 3 (p. 43)

 * Would she really behave as Luke said, though? It made a sort of sense, but then people seldom keep company with rationality at times when they should.
 * Chapter 6 (p. 109)

 * “It’s kind of you to want to do me a favor,” I said, “but at times such as this, one must be excused for checking the price tag.”
 * Chapter 7 (p. 128)

 * “It means nothing to be able to transport yourself anywhere,” I heard her say, “if you are a fool in all places.”
 * Chapter 12 (p. 212)

Knight of Shadows (1989)
All page numbers from the mass market paperback edition published by Avon Books ISBN 0-380-75501-7

 * “Do you know something I don’t?” I asked . “Many things,” she replied.
 * Chapter 1 (p. 14)

 * “You don’t trust anybody, do you?” “Family tradition,” I replied, “backed up by recent experience.”
 * Chapter 3 (p. 62)

 * That’s life: Trust and you’re betrayed; don’t trust and you betray yourself. Like most moral paradoxes, it places you in an untenable position. And it was too late for my normal solution. I couldn’t walk away from the game.
 * Chapter 3 (p. 63)

 * No one likes to be a butt of the universe’s jokes.
 * Chapter 3 (p. 67)

 * “You can make me play,” I said, “but you cannot make me choose. My will is my own.”
 * Chapter 4 (p. 81)

 * “I guess I have peculiar feelings about little things—like the value of life.” “Indignation is cheap. Even Albert Schweitzer’s reverence for life didn’t include the tapeworm, the tsetse fly, the cancer cell.”
 * Chapter 5 (p. 98)

 * I held out my hand, and he shook his head. “Let’s not get carried away,” he told me. “If my word’s no good without a handshake, it’s no good with one, is it?”
 * Chapter 6 (p. 121)

 * “Why does there always have to be a reason?” he said. “The alternative is irrationality,” I replied.
 * Chapter 6 (p. 121)

 * The doorway to the left—the one that let upon my bedroom—seemed to be outlined in red and pulsing. Did that mean I was supposed to avoid it or rush in there? That’s the trouble with mystical advice.
 * Chapter 9 (p. 189)

 * The biggest bar to understanding is the interpretation they put on each other’s doings.
 * Chapter 10 (p. 200)

Prince of Chaos (1991)

 * All page numbers from the mass market paperback edition published by Avon Books ISBN 0-380-75502-5

 * See one coronation and you’ve seen them all. Sounds cynical and probably is, especially when the principal is your best friend and his queen’s your inadvertent lover.
 * Chapter 1 (p. 1; opening words)

 * Every time I complained about politics, here, in Amber, back in the States on the Shadow Earth, there was the automatic corollary of considering the way I’d manage situations if I were in charge.
 * Chapter 2 (p. 26)

 * A crown does not automatically make a person daggerproof.
 * Chapter 2 (p. 26)

 * “What brought all this on?” ”The higher order edition of the Pattern I encountered in the Jewel, actually. There were aspects of it I simply could not understand. This led to considerations of chaos theory, then to Menninger and all the others for its manifestations in consciousness.” “Any conclusions?” “I am wiser therefor.” “I mean, concerning the Pattern.” “Yes. Either it possesses a certain element of irrationality itself, like living things, or it is an intelligence of such an order that some of its processes only seem irrational to lesser beings. Either explanation amounts to the same thing from a practical standpoint.”
 * Chapter 3 (pp. 46-47)

 * Sometimes you hear an unlikely thing and that’s all it is. Other times, you hear something improbable and it strikes an echo.
 * Chapter 4 (p. 59)

 * “Do you think she’s up to something?” “Probably,” he said. “I can’t recall a time when she hasn’t been.”
 * Chapter 4 (p. 68)

 * I no longer felt my body. Time was an alien concept. The striving was no longer striving, but a form of elemental movement now, beside which glaciers rushed.
 * Chapter 5 (p. 90)

 * No matter what you are and no matter what’s been done to you, there will have to be some element of choice for you, sooner or later. You are greater than the sum of your parts, Merlin. No matter what went into your birth and your life up to now, you’ve got eyes and a brain and a set of values. Don’t let anybody bullshit you, not even me. And when the time comes, if it comes, make damn sure the choice is your own. Nothing that’s gone before will matter then.
 * Chapter 5 (p. 93)

 * I don’t know that I ever wanted greatness, on its own. It seems rather like wanting to be an engineer, rather than wanting to design something—or wanting to be a writer, rather than wanting to write. It should be a by-product, not a thing in itself. Otherwise, it’s just an ego trip.
 * Chapter 6 (p. 109)

 * Things that had tantalized me for much of my adult life seemed near to explanation now. I was not happy with all of the possibilities that tumbled through my mind. Still, no matter which ones came out on top, it would beat ignorance.
 * Chapter 7 (p. 121)

 * Irony, as usual, a three-to-one favorite whenever sentimentality makes its move.
 * Chapter 8 (p. 158)

 * Don’t wake me for the end of the world unless it has very good special effects.
 * Chapter 11 (p. 206)

 * “Riddles,” I said. “Always preferable to no answer at all,” he responded.
 * Chapter 11 (p. 211)

title: The Chronicles of Amber


text:
Lord of Light

Lord of Light (1967) is an epic science fiction/fantasy novel by Roger Zelazny. Awarded the 1968 Hugo Award for Best Novel, and nominated for a Nebula Award in the same category, it tells of a rebellion on a planet whose original settlers, equipped with powerful abilities and advanced technology, keep most of society at a very primitive level, and rule the world as "gods" based upon the Hindu pantheon. They completely control the technology of re-incarnation which provides the opportunity for near-immortality for most people, but not always in such forms as they themselves would chose, and the rebellious are often re-incarnated in animal form. One of the most powerful of "The First", known by many names including "Sam" and "Kalkin", sets out to change this situation. Parts of an unmade film project for this novel were used as cover to rescue US officials from revolutionary Iran, in a CIA operation known as the Canadian Caper, which is the basis for the film Argo.

ONE

 * It is said that fifty-three years after his liberation he returned from the Golden Cloud, to take up once again the gauntlet of Heaven, to oppose the Order of Life and the gods who ordained it so. His followers had prayed for his return, though their prayers were sin. Prayer should not trouble one who has gone on to Nirvana, no matter what the circumstances of his going. The wearers of the saffron robe prayed, however, that He of the Sword, Manjusri, should come again among them, The Boddhisatva is said to have heard...
 * Chapter introduction

 * His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god. But then, he never claimed not to be a god. Circumstances being what they were, neither admission could be of any benefit. Silence, though, could.
 * Opening words.

 * It was in the days of the rains that their prayers went up, not from the fingering of knotted prayer cords or the spinning of prayer wheels, but from the great pray-machine in the monastery of Ratri, goddess of the Night.

 * Despite his fall from favor, Yama was still deemed mightiest of the artificers, though it was not doubted that the Gods of the City would have him to die the real death were they to learn of the pray-machine. For that matter, though, it was not doubted that they would have him to die the real death without the excuse of the pray-machine, also, were he to come into their custody. How he would settle this matter with the Lords of Karma was his own affair, though none doubted that when the time came he would find a way.

 * "Your prayers and your curses come to the same, Lord Yama," commented the ape. "That is to say, nothing." "It has taken you seventeen incarnations to arrive at this truth?" said Yama. "I can see then why you are still doing time as an ape."

 * Not by the normal course of events shall we be restored or matters settled, Tak of the Bright Spear. We must beat our own path.
 * Ratri to Tak

 * When there is no real hope we must mint our own. If the coin be counterfeit it may still be passed.
 * Ratri to Tak

 * Sam was the greatest charlatan in the memory of god or man. He was also the worthiest opponent Trimurti ever faced.
 * Ratri to Tak

 * To the sleeper ... He stirs
 * Ratri to Tak

 * A grimace of pain made his mouth a bow, his teeth the arrows, clenched

 * Now I just want to sleep the sleep of ages, to know again the Great Rest, the perpetual bliss, to hear the songs the stars sing on the shores of the great sea.
 * Sam to Yama

 * "I am nothing," replied the other. "A leaf caught in a whirlpool, perhaps. A feather in the wind ...". "Too bad," said Yama, "for there are leaves and feathers enough in the world for me to have labored so long only to increase their number."

 * If by 'demon' you mean a malefic, supernatural creature, possessed of great powers, life span, and the ability to temporarily assume virtually any shape - then no. This is the generally accepted definition, but it is untrue in one respect. ... It is not a supernatural creature
 * Yama to Tak

 * It makes a great deal of difference, you see. It is the difference between the unknown and the unknowable, between science and fantasy—it is a matter of essence. The four points of the compass be logic, knowledge, wisdom and the unknown. Some do bow in that final direction. Others advance upon it. To bow before the one is to lose sight of the three. I may submit to the unknown, but never to the unknowable. The man who bows in that final direction is either a saint or a fool. I have no use for either.
 * Yama to Tak

 * I have been a lone traveler for many years. Accidents always happen to other people.
 * Aram to Yama

 * Is that the best you can do? ... Your flames are everywhere but nothing burns.
 * Yama to Mara

 * Yes, Mara, there is a deathgod ... Fallen or no, the real death dwells in my eyes. You must meet them.
 * Yama to Mara

 * I have many names, and none of them matter.
 * Sam in a sermon to his followers.

 * Names are not important... To speak is to name names, but to speak is not important. A thing happens once that has never happened before. Seeing it, a man looks upon reality. He cannot tell others what he has seen. Others wish to know, however, so they question him saying, 'What is it like, this thing you have seen?' So he tries to tell them. Perhaps he has seen the very first fire in the world. He tells them, 'It is red, like a poppy, but through it dance other colors. It has no form, like water, flowing everywhere. It is warm, like the sun of summer, only warmer. It exists for a time upon a piece of wood, and then the wood is gone, as though it were eaten, leaving behind that which is black and can be sifted like sand. When the wood is gone, it too is gone.' Therefore, the hearers must think reality is like a poppy, like water, like the sun, like that which eats and excretes. They think it is like to anything that they are told it is like by the man who has known it. But they have not looked upon fire. They cannot really know it. They can only know of it. But fire comes again into the world, many times. More men look upon fire. After a time, fire is as common as grass and clouds and the air they breathe. They see that, while it is like a poppy, it is not a poppy, while it is like water, it is not water, while it is like the sun, it is not the sun, and while it is like that which eats and passes wastes, it is not that which eats and passes wastes, but something different from each of these apart or all of these together. So they look upon this new thing and they make a new word to call it. They call it 'fire.' "If they come upon one who still has not seen it and they speak to him of fire, he does not know what they mean. So they, in turn, fall back upon telling him what fire is like. 'As they do so, they know from their own experience that what they are telling him is not the truth, but only a part of it. They know that this man will never know reality from their words, though all the words in the world are theirs to use. He must look upon the fire, smell of it, warm his hands by it, stare into its heart, or remain forever ignorant. Therefore, 'fire' does not matter, 'earth' and 'air' and 'water' do not matter. 'I' do not matter. No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words. The more words he remembers, the cleverer do his fellows esteem him. He looks upon the great transformations of the world, but he does not see them as they were seen when man looked upon reality for the first time. Their names come to his lips and he smiles as he tastes them, thinking he knows them in the naming. The thing that has never happened before is still happening. It is still a miracle. The great burning blossom squats, flowing, upon the limb of the world, excreting the ash of the world, and being none of these things I have named and at the same time all of them, and this is reality — the Nameless.
 * Sam to his followers.

 * I charge you — forget the names you bear, forget the words I speak as soon as they are uttered. Look, rather, upon the Nameless within yourselves, which arises as I address it. It hearkens not to my words, but to the reality within me, of which it is part. This is the atman, which hears me rather than my words. All else is unreal. To define is to lose. The essence of all things is the Nameless. The Nameless is unknowable, mightier even than Brahma. Things pass, but the essence remains. You sit, therefore, in the midst of a dream. Essence dreams it a dream of form. Forms pass, but the essence remains, dreaming new dreams. Man names these dreams and thinks to have captured the essence, not knowing that he invokes the unreal. These stones, these walls, these bodies you see seated about you are poppies and water and the sun. They are the dreams of the Nameless. They are fire, if you like.
 * Sam to his followers.

 * Occasionally, there may come a dreamer who is aware that he is dreaming. He may control something of the dream-stuff, bending it to his will, or he may awaken into greater self-knowledge. If he chooses the path of self-knowledge, his glory is great and he shall be for all ages like unto a star. If he chooses instead the way of the Tantras, combining Samsara and Nirvana, comprehending the world and continuing to live in it, this one is mighty among dreamers.
 * Sam to his followers.

 * To dwell within Samsara, however, is to be subject to the works of those who are mighty among dreamers. If they be mighty for good, it is a golden time. If they be mighty for ill, it is a time of darkness. The dream may turn to nightmare.
 * Sam to his followers.

 * This night the Lord of Illusion passed among you — Mara, mighty among dreamers — mighty for ill. He did come upon another who may work with the stuff of dreams in a different way. He did meet with Dharma, who may expel a dreamer from his dream. They did struggle, and the Lord Mara is no more.
 * Sam to his followers, regarding the battle they had witnessed between Mara and Yama.

 * To struggle against the dreamers who dream ugliness, be they men or gods, cannot but be the will of the Nameless. This struggle will also bear suffering, and so one's karmic burden will be lightened thereby, just as it would be by enduring the ugliness; but this suffering is productive of a higher end in the light of the eternal values of which the sages so often speak.
 * Sam to his followers.

 * "For a spur of the moment thing, you came up with a fairly engaging sermon." "Thanks." "Do you really believe what you preached?" Sam laughed. "I'm very gullible when it comes to my own words. I believe everything I say, though I know I'm a liar."
 * Yama and Sam

 * I just wanted to try another line on the audience. It is difficult to stir rebellion among those to whom all things are good. There is no room for evil in their minds, despite the fact that they suffer it constantly. The slave upon the rack who knows that he will be born again — perhaps as a fat merchant — if he suffers willingly — his outlook is not the same as that of a man with but one life to live. He can bear anything, knowing that great as his present pain may be, his future pleasure will rise higher. If such a one does not choose to believe in good or evil, perhaps then beauty and ugliness can be made to serve him as well. Only the names have been changed.
 * Sam to Yama

 * "Yama thinks the Golden Cloud to have changed you." "Perhaps it has." "He believes it to have softened you, weakened you. You have always posed as a mystic, but now he believes you have become one — to your own undoing, to our undoing." He shook his head, turned around. But he did not see her. Stood she there invisible, or had she withdrawn? He spoke softly and without inflection: "I shall tear these stars from out the heavens," he stated, "and hurl them in the faces of the gods, if this be necessary. I shall blaspheme in every Temple throughout the land. I shall take lives as a fisherman takes fish, by the net, if this be necessary. I shall mount me again up to the Celestial City, though every step be a flame or a naked sword and the way be guarded by tigers. One day will the gods look down from Heaven and see me upon the stair, bringing them the gift they fear most. That day will the new Yuga begin.
 * Ratri and Sam

TWO

 * He played tune after forbidden tune, and the professional musicians put professional expressions of scorn upon their faces; but beneath the table several feet were tapping in slow time with the music.
 * On a musician who had been instructed by Sam to play The Blue Danube.

 * The old religion is not only the religion - it is the revealed, enforced and frighteningly demonstrable religion. But don't think that last part too loudly.
 * Olvegg to Sam

 * The definition of bad karma is anything our friends the gods don't like.
 * Olvegg to Sam

 * Sam smiled. "They are not omnipotent." "I sincerely hope not," replied the other, "but I fear that day is not far off."
 * Olvegg to Sam

 * "Think not less of me in my omniscience ... if I admit to having, for the moment, forgotten these figures."
 * Brahma to Sam

 * Then the fit hit the Shan.
 * True fact: The entire book grew out of this pun.

 * Good luck. No gods be with you!
 * The Prince to his men

 * This day your sin account is filled to overflowing.
 * Olvegg to Sam

THREE

 * It is said that, when the Teacher appeared, those of all castes went to hear his teachings, as well as animals, gods and an occasional saint, to come away improved and uplifted. It was generally conceded that he had received enlightenment, except by those who believed him to be a fraud, sinner, criminal or practical joker. These latter ones were not all to be numbered as his enemies; but, on the other hand, not all of those improved and uplifted could be counted as his friends and supporters. His followers called him Mahasamatman and some said he was a god. So, after it was seen that he had been accepted as a teacher, was looked upon with respect, had many of the wealthy numbered as his supporters and had gained a reputation reaching far across the land, he was referred to as Tathagatha, meaning He Who Has Achieved. It must be noted that while the goddess Kali (sometimes known as Durga in her softer moments) never voiced a formal opinion as to his buddhahood, she did render him the singular honor of dispatching her holy executioner to pay him her tribute, rather than a mere hired assassin....

 * The local Brahmins did not approve of the antiritualistic teachings of the Buddha, but his presence filled their coffers to overflowing; so they learned to live in his squat shadow, never voicing the word tirthika—heretic.

 * The Buddha, looking imperturbable, returned his attention to the drama. A monk seated nearby noticed he was tapping his fingers on the ground, and he decided that the Enlightened One must be keeping time with the drumbeats, for it was common knowledge that he was above such things as impatience.

 * Breath is the least appreciated gift of the gods. None sing hymns to it, praising the good air, breathed by king and beggar, master and dog alike. But, oh, to be without it!
 * Yama to Rild

 * No one gives flowers to Death
 * Priest to Yama

 * "You may not have this man, oh Death," said the Master of the North, "for he belongs to the world, and we of the world will defend him."

 * As you know, the personal strengths and weakness of a leader are no true indication of the merits of his cause.
 * Sam to Yama

 * Some quicksand is quicker than other quicksand. Fortunately, you are settling into that of the slower sort. [...]  In the meantime, I suggest you solicit aid of my followers or learn the difficult art of mud-breathing.
 * Sam to Yama

 * Even a mirror will not show you yourself, if you do not wish to see.
 * Sam to Yama

FOUR

 * It is told how the Lord of Light descended into the Well of the Demons, to make there a bargain with the chief of the Rakasha. He dealt in good faith, but the Rakasha are the Rakasha. That is to say, they are malefic creatures, possessed of great powers, life-span and the ability to assume nearly any shape. The Rakasha are almost indestructible. Their chiefest lack is a true body; their chiefest virtue, their honor toward their gambling debts. That the Lord of Light went to Hellwell at all serves to show that perhaps he was somewhat distraught concerning the state of the world...

 * Hellwell lies at the top of the world and it leads down to its roots. It is probably as old as the world itself; and if it is not, it should be, because it looks as if it were.
 * Describing the prison of the demons (The Rakasha, the planet's native energy-beings)..

 * There is a huge, burnished metal door, erected by the First, that is heavy as sin, three times the height of a man and half that distance in width. It is a full cubit thick and bears a head-sized ring of brass, a complicated pressure-plate lock and an inscription that reads, roughly, "Go away. This is not a place to be. If you do try to enter here, you will fail and also be cursed. If somehow you succeed, then do not complain that you entered unwarned, nor bother us with your deathbed prayers." Signed, "The Gods."
 * Describing the sealed entrance of Hellwell

 * Very few feet have ever trod the trail that leads to Hellwell. Of those who visited, most came only to look, to see whether the great door really existed; and when they returned home and told of having seen it, they were generally mocked.

 * It is told that Pannalal the Sage, having sharpened his mind with meditation and divers asceticisms, had divined the operation of the lock and entered Hellwell, spending a day and a night beneath the mountain. He was thereafter known as Pannalal the Mad.

 * Think not, oh Siddhartha, that because you wear a different body you go now unrecognized. I look upon the flows of energy which are your real being — not the flesh that masks them.
 * Taraka to Sam

 * A facility with oaths is not the most reassuring quality in a bargainer. And your strength is also your weakness in any bargaining at all. You are so strong as to be unable to grant to another the power to control you. You have no gods to swear by. The only thing you will honor is a gambling debt, and there are no grounds for gaming here.
 * Sam to Taraka

 * "It is a difficult problem," said Taraka. "I should give anything I have to be free — but then, all that I have is power — pure power, in essence uncommittable. A greater force might subdue it, but that is not the answer. I do not really know how to give you satisfactory assurance that my promise will be kept. If I were you, I certainly would not trust me."
 * Taraka to Sam

 * "What is your power, Siddhartha? How do you do what you do?" it asked him. "Call it electrodirection," said the other, "mind over energy. It is as good a term as any. But whatever you call it, do not seek to cross it again. I can kill you with it, though no weapon formed of matter may be laid upon you. Go now!"
 * Taraka and Sam after Sam has released Taraka.

 * "I came to Hellwell, the wrath of the gods swarming and buzzing at my back. Now sixty-six demons are loose in the world. Very soon, your presence will be felt. The gods will know who has done this thing, and they will take steps against us. The element of surprise will be lost." "We fought the gods in the days of old . . ." "And these are not the days of old, Taraka. The gods are stronger now, much stronger. Long have you been bound, and their might has grown over the ages. Even if you command the first army of Rakasha in history, and backing them in battle I raise me up a mighty army of men — even then, will the final result be a thing uncertain. To delay now is to throw everything away."
 * Sam trying to convince Taraka not to delay in preparing for battle against the gods.

FIVE

 * From Hellwell to Heaven he went, there to commune with the gods. The Celestial City holds many mysteries, including some of the keys to his own past. Not all that transpired during the time he dwelled there is known. It is known, however, that he petitioned the gods on behalf of the world, obtaining the sympathy of some, the enmity of others. Had he chosen to betray humanity and accept the proffers of the gods, it is said by some that he might have dwelled forever as a Lord of the City and not have met his death beneath the claws of the phantom cats of Kaniburrha...

 * Vishnu, in his wisdom, had seen that there must be a balance between the metropolis and the wilderness. While wilderness can exist independent of cities, that which dwells within a city requires more than the tamed plants of a pleasance. If the world were all city, he had reasoned, the dwellers within it would turn a portion of it into a wilderness, for there is that within them all which desires that somewhere there be an end to order and a beginning of chaos. So, within his mind there had grown up a forest, pumping forth streams and the smells of growth and decay, uttering the cries of the uncitied creatures who dwelled within its shadows, shrugging in the wind and glistening in the rain, falling down and growing up again.

 * "I knew him a long time ago," said Rudra. "Accelerationist?"  "He wasn't then. Wasn't much of anything, politically. He was one of the First, though, one of those who had looked upon Urath." "Oh?"  "He distinguished himself in the wars against the People-of-the-Sea and against the Mothers of the Terrible Glow." Here, Rudra made a sign in the air. "Later," he continued, "this was remembered, and he was given charge of the northern marches in the wars against the demons. He was known as Kalkin in those days, and it was there that he came to be called Binder. He developed an Attribute which he could use against the demons. With it, he destroyed most of the Yakshas and bound the Rakasha. When Yama and Kali captured him at Hellwell in Malwa, he had already succeeded in freeing these latter. Thus, the Rakasha are again abroad in the world."

 * "You fertility deities are worse than Marxists," he said. "You think that's all that goes on between people. We were just friends for a time, but she is too hard on her friends and so loses them."
 * Rudra about Kali, to Murugan

 * As there is a time for everything, there is a time also for the end of anything. This is an age for the consolidation of man’s gains upon this world. This is a time for the sharing of knowledge, not the crossing of blades.
 * Sam to Kali

 * You are a fool to speak of last great battles, Sam, for the last great battle is always the next one.
 * Kali to Sam

 * Doubt, Lady, is the chastity of the mind, and I bear its seal upon my own.
 * Sam to Kali

 * I do not have the time to give you more than my contempt.
 * Kali to Sam

 * Ganesha the god-maker regarded the jungle about him. Though he walked through the realm of the phantom cats, he feared no evil. For the Lord of Chaos walked by his side, and the Trident of Destruction comforted him.

 * "Are you not Maitreya, Lord of Light, for whom the world has waited, lo, these many years — he whose coming I prophesied long ago in a poem?" "No, my name is Sam," he replied, "and I am about to depart the world, not enter into it. Who are you?" "I am a bird who was once a poet. All morning have I flown, since the yawp of Garuda opened the day. I was flying about the ways of Heaven looking for Lord Rudra, hoping to befoul him with my droppings, when I felt the power of a weird come over the land. I have flown far, and I have seen many things, Lord of Light"

 * "I have seen all-colored Mara atop the spire of the highest tower, and I have felt the power of the weird he lays — for I have seen the phantom cats troubled within the wood, then hurrying in this direction. I have seen the tears of a man and of a woman. I have heard the laughter of a goddess. I have seen a bright spear uplifted against the morning, and I have heard an oath spoken. I have seen the Lord of Light at last, of whom I wrote, long ago:
 * ''Always dying, never dead; Ever ending, never ended; Loathed in darkness, Clothed in light, He comes, to end a world, As morning ends the night. These lines were writ By Morgan, free, Who shall, the day he dies, See this prophecy."
 * The bird ruffled his feathers then and was still. "I am pleased, bird, that you have had a chance to see many things," said Sam, "and that within the fiction of your metaphor you have achieved a certain satisfaction. Unfortunately, poetic truth differs considerably from that which surrounds most of the business of life." "Hail, Lord of Light!" said the bird, and sprang into the air. As he rose, he was pierced through by an arrow shot from a nearby window by one who hated jackbirds. Sam hurried on.

SIX

 * During the time that followed the death of Brahma, there came upon the Celestial City a period of turmoil. Several among the gods were even expelled from Heaven. It was a time when just about everyone feared being considered an Accelerationist; and, as fate would have it, at some point or other during this period, just about everyone was considered an Accelerationist. Though Great-Souled Sam was dead, his spirit was said to live on, mocking. Then, in the days of disaffection and intrigue that led up to the Great Battle, it was rumored that more than his spirit might have lived on.

 * I am but young, as gods go, but I have heard it said that in the early days of the world the hero with whom you rode — Kalkin — was the same as the one called Sam. If you had reason to hate your ancient Lord, and Sam was truly he, then could I see their enlisting you against this thing he had started. Might this be true?
 * Yama to Kali

 * Death is mighty, and is no one's friend.
 * Kubera to Ratri

 * "Revenge is part of the illusion of self. How can a man kill that which neither lives nor dies truly, but which exists only as a reflection of the Absolute?" "You did a pretty good job of it, though, even if, as you say, it was only a rearrangement." "Thank you."
 * Sam and Kubera

 * "I decided that mankind could live better without gods. If I disposed of them all, people could start having can openers and cans to open again, and things like that, without fearing the wrath of Heaven. We've stepped on these poor fools enough. I wanted to give them a chance to be free, to build what they wanted." "But they live, and they live and they live." "Sometimes, and sometimes not. So do the gods." "You were about the last Accelerationist left in the world, Sam. No one would have thought you were also the deadliest."
 * Sam and Kubera

 * "The gods are strong — stronger than they have ever been before." "But tell me who is coming to aid us." "Lord Nirriti the Black, who hates all things, hates the Gods of the City most of all. So he is sending a thousand unliving ones to fight on the plains beside the Vedra. He said that, after the battle, we of the Rakasha may take our choice from the bodies which yet remain among the mindless ones he has grown." "I do not relish aid from the Black One, but I am in no position to discriminate..."
 * Taraka and Sam

 * It is said that each day recapitulates the history of the world, coming up out of darkness and cold into confused light and beginning warmth, consciousness blinking its eyes somewhere in midmorning, awakening thoughts a jumble of illogic and unattached emotion, and all speeding together toward the order of noontide, the slow, poignant decline of dusk, the mystical vision of twilight, the end of entropy that is night once more.

 * "There are only demigods and men upon the field," said Death. "They are still testing our strength. There are very few who remember the full power of Kalkin." "The full power of Kalkin?" asked Sam. "That has never been released, oh Death. Not in all the ages of the world.
 * Yama and Sam

 * Overhead, the thunder chariot passed once again. Sam raised his lance and pyrotechnic hell broke loose about the passing vessel. "You should not have let them know you could do that! Not yet!"
 * Yama to Sam

 * "The Buddha has gone to nirvana," said Brahma. "Preach it in the Temples! Sing it in the streets'. Glorious was his passing! He has reformed the old religion, and we are better now than ever before! Let all who would think otherwise remember Keenset!"
 * Brahma, (formerly Kali) at the second funeral of Sam.

SEVEN

 * Another name by which he is sometimes called is Maitreya, meaning Lord of Light. After his return from the Golden Cloud, he journeyed to the Palace of Kama at Khaipur, where he planned and built his strength against the Day of the Yuga. A sage once said that one never sees the Day of the Yuga, but only knows it when it is past. For it dawns like any other day and passes in the same wise, recapitulating the history of the world.

 * "Men no longer fear Heaven so much as they used to. They are more willing to defend themselves; and now that they are better equipped, the gods are less willing to face them." "Then Sam is winning. Across the years, he is beating them."
 * Jan Olvegg and Nirriti

 * Taraka of the Rakasha was uneasy. Flitting above the clouds that moved through the middle of the day, he thought upon the ways of power. He had once been mightiest. In the days before the binding there had been none who could stand against him. Then Siddhartha the Binder had come. He had known of him earlier, known of him as Kalkin and had known him to be strong. Sooner or later, he had realized, they would have to meet, that he might test the power of that Attribute which Kalkin was said to have raised up. When they had come together, on that mighty, gone day when the mountaintops had flared with their fury, on that day the Binder had won. And in their second encounter, ages afterward, he had somehow beaten him even more fully. But he had been the only one, and now he was gone from out the world. Of all creatures, only the Binder had bested the Lord of Hellwell. Then the gods had come to challenge his power. They had been puny in the early days, struggling to discipline their mutant powers with drugs, hypnosis, meditation, neurosurgery — forging them into Attributes — and across the ages, those powers had grown. Four of them had entered Hellwell, only four, and his legions had not been able to repel them. The one called Shiva was strong, but the Binder had later slain him. This was as it should be, for Taraka recognized the Binder as a peer.

 * Time like an ocean, space like its water, Sam in the middle, standing, decided.

 * I know my power is returning. I can feel it. Many things are returning now. During the weeks we have dwelled here in Ratri's palace I have meditated upon my past lives. They were not all failures, deathgod. I have decided this today. Though Heaven has beaten me at every turn, each victory has cost them much.
 * Sam to Yama

 * Taraka screamed as Siddhartha rode toward him upon a white horse, the air crackling and smelling of ozone: "No, Binder! Hold your power! My death belongs to Yama . . ." "Oh foolish demon!" said Sam. "It need not have been..."

 * "You? You rose again?" "It doesn't count," said Sam. "I didn't do it the hard way." Tears filled the Black One's eyes. "It means you'll win, though," he gasped. "I can't understand why He permitted it..."
 * Sam and Renfrew (Nirriti)

 * I shall return to being a man, and I shall let the people keep the Buddha who is in their hearts. Whatever the source, the message was pure, believe me. That is the only reason it took root and grew.
 * Sam to Renfrew

 * “Something always manages to draw me near the tree that lightning is about to fall upon.” “Destiny, sir.” “Rather an accidental social conscience and some right mistake-making, I fear.”
 * Sam and Tak

 * The spoon came alive with spoon-ness and the ball with ball-ness and the block with block-ness, and the girl laughed. Even the puppy seemed to study the objects.
 * Description of Kubera beginning to help Yama teach lessons to Murga

As the wearers of the saffron robe still meditate upon the Way of Light, and the girl who is named Murga visits the Temple daily, to place before her dark one in his shrine the only devotion he receives, of flowers.
 * Death and Light are everywhere, always, and they begin, end, strive, attend, into and upon the Dream of the Nameless that is the world, burning words within Samsara, perhaps to create a thing of beauty.

Quotes about Lord of Light

 * I was pleased to get a copy of Roger Zelazny's novel Lord of Light the other day. It's one of my favourite books (I think the first thing author Steve Brust ever said to me was "Let's have an argument. Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light is the best book anyone's ever written." "Ah," I said, "If you make it best SF book of the 1960s, I'll go along with it." "Oh. Fair enough." It was the first of a long line of failed arguments.) It's got a blurb from me on it, which I hope sells many copies.
 * Neil Gaiman in Neil Gaiman's Journal (29 May 2004)

 * Tricky and brilliant and heartfelt and dangerous.
 * Neil Gaiman, blurb on the cover of the 2004 edition of Lord of Light.

 * It's fantasy, or it's science fiction, or it's a retelling of the tales of the Hindu gods, as they encounter Mahasamatman, who may be Buddha and may just be a guy called Sam. It's a book I reread every few decades, and love.
 * "Neil Gaiman's 10 Mythic Fantasy Books to Read" at Amazon.com

 *  Lord Of Light is a novel about a future world after the destruction of Earth, conquered by men who, through ultratechnology, give themselves godlike powers and set themselves up as the old Hindu gods to rule the common people. Called The First, they have achieved a kind of immortality by transferring their identities from old bodies to new ones. These deicrats (as Zelazny calls them) through centuries of "divine" rule, have become corrupt, and only one among them will openly oppose their tyranny. He is the hero, "who was variously known as Mahasamatman, Kalkin, Manjusri, Siddhartha, Tathagatha, Binder, Maitreya, the Enlight-ened One, Buddha and Sam."
 * Barry Ira Geller, writer of the screenplay for Lord of Light, in a summary of Lord of Light

In the end he will be recognized by history as the true leader, the Binder of Destiny, The Lord of Light…
 * "Colonists from another planet conquer Earth and become the historic Hindu Gods until they turn against each other for control of the world. From this heralds the return of the Buddha, magic, spirituality, unification of all forces, and a new generation of mankind" … The international best-selling Hugo Award winning novel of science fantasy by: Roger Zelazny Lord of Light is … A metaphysical action adventure love story where the crew of a space ship colonize an ancient planet, their passengers become the populace, and they use their technology to turn themselves into powerful gods and goddesses. One man stands alone to fight his old colleagues and free mankind. … Sam is the dreamer and master schemer. He is the strategist and cosmic trickster who becomes Siddhartha and then the Buddha to ward off the iron grasp of Heaven. Sam is the ancient renegade god Kalkin whose powers become ever-more revealed to him as he fights to change the course of an entire civilization — and upon whose shoulders rests the future of the entire world.
 * Barry Ira Geller, in a summary of Lord of Light

'''The book opens with a renegade "god" at an isolated temple calling the book's hero back from "heaven." '''
 *  Lord of Light is a wonderful novel, fully worthy of the praise it has garnered. It is set many centuries in the future, after "the death of Urath." On a colony planet, men have battled the previous inhabitants and won, and have established a society. This society is based on technological means of imitating the Hindu religion. Specifically, when the body nears death, it is possible to transfer the "mind" or "soul" to a new body, even the body of an animal. But some of the earliest colonists, including the "First," have additional powers, which give them the status of gods. They also have taken control of the means of reincarnation, and a faction among them is using that means in political ways: punishing their enemies with reincarnation as animals, or with the "true death." The result is a society of humans living in a world in which something resembling Hinduism is literally true. Furthermore, the leading faction of "gods" is using its powers to keep the technological level of human society low enough that their own position cannot be threatened.
 * Rich Horton, in a review at SF Site (2000)

The agent had planned to travel to Iran under the guise of a movie producer and fool Iranian officials into believing that the six Americans were actors and members of his production team. Fortunately for Mendez, Chambers had the perfect script. In December 1979, Chambers gave Mendez Geller's Lord of Light script and Kirby's storyboards, which had remained in Chambers' possession since the plug was pulled on the film's production. Chambers and Mendez changed the name of the production from Lord of Light to Argo and the rest of the story became history, as the plan was successful and all six Americans made it home safely. Geller said he didn't learn that his script had been used for the top secret mission until 2001.
 * Mendez said he needed a movie script for a scheme that he had concocted to rescue six U.S. diplomatic personnel from the Canadian embassy in Iran where they were hiding.
 * Hayley Peterson, reporting on how the screenplay for a cancelled Lord of Light film became a significant prop in the C.I.A operation dramatized in the film Argo, in "Revealed: The actual screenplay drawings behind 'Argo' that helped American hostages escape Iran in 1980" in Daily Mail (21 February 2013)

With assistance from sci-fi visionaries Ray Bradbury, Paolo Solari, and artist Jack Kirby, Geller was using the script to help fund a science-fiction theme park named, appropriately enough, Science Fiction Land. Science Fiction Land would have been a place for top scientists to show off their gadgets to the public. In other words, something that's way more exciting than the movie Argo. (My friend described the situation best by saying, “Maybe this makes me a bad person, but I want to live in the alternate universe where a couple of Americans died in Iran and this theme park exists.”) While the park's long dead, an Oscar-based jolt of enthusiasm has Geller kicking the tires on finally seeing his original script turned into a film, and he's the subject of a forthcoming documentary called Science Fiction Land.
 * In 1979, Geller penned Lord of Light, an adaptation of Roger Zelazny's Hugo Award-winning sci-fi novel. The title morphed into Argo when the CIA evacuated six US diplomats from Iran by turning them into a film crew. But contrary to how Affleck's film portrays it, the script wasn't just some jokey, throwaway nonsense a hack writer shat out. It was the opening salvo for a dream that would change the world.
 * Rick Paulas, in We Spoke To The Guy Who Wrote The Real Screenplay For 'Argo' at Vice.com (4 March 2013)

 * While few of the characters have much depth, they manage to be both human and, when they take on their Aspects and wield their Attributes, embodiments of fundamental forces. Sam himself is a crotchety old-timer and a con-man and a trickster — but also an embodiment of military prowess and defiance against odds. … Myth and religion never actually break free from the scientific scaffolding, but they manage to make it irrelevant — one could almost consider Lord of Light a demonstration that their symbolic power does not rest on their metaphysical claims. … Somehow all the disparate components of Lord of Light — humour and epic, science and religion, action and philosophy — come together in a successful novel. The result is my favourite Zelazny work and indeed one of my favourite science fiction novels of all time. Though it won the Hugo award in 1968, it has I think been relatively neglected; it can bear comparison with the much better known Dune (and there are parallels with Herbert's use of Sufism in that work).
 * Danny Yee at Danny Yee's Book Reviews

 *  Lord of Light was intentionally written so that it could be taken as a science fiction or a fantasy novel. On the one hand, I attempted to provide some justifications for what went on in the way of the bizarre; on the other, I employed a style I associate with fantasy in the telling of the story. I wrote it that way on purpose, leaving some intentional ambiguity, because I wanted it to lie somewhat between both camps and not entirely in either. I did this because I did not see much stuff being written at that time which fit that description; because I wanted to see whether I could do it; and because I was curious as to how such a book would be received.
 * Roger Zelazny, as quoted in "'…And Call Me Roger' : The Literary Life of Roger Zelazny", Part 2, by Christopher S. Kovacs, in The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny (2009), Vol. 2

title: Lord of Light