Roger Zelazny citáty

strana 3

„Jen hlupák nemá strach z opravdové síly.“

„Hřbitovy jsou plné lidí, co si mysleli, že je nikdo nemůže nahradit.“

„Vždycky se mi zdálo, že peklo jsou ostatní lidé.“

„…. a kouř bez ohně se najde jen zřídka…..“

„Buď má v sobě element iracionality, nebo je to inteligence takové úrovně, že některé z jeho projevů se nižším bytostem jen jeví jako iracionální.“

„Srdeční záležitosti jsou buď strašně jednoduché, nebo úplně neproniknutelné.“

„Všechny naše speciální síly mají svůj rub. Čím větší síla, tím větší je i cena za ni.“

„Život je plný dveří, které nejdou otevřít, když klepete, a zároveň je tam plno otevřených dveří, o které nestojíte.“

„Člověk je zvíře, které s sebou přináší kulturu.“

„Nebude možné se tomu vyhnout. Taková byla podstata hry, a já si na ni nemohl stěžovat, neboť jsem to byl já, kdo pravidla stanovil.“

„Nejtěžší věcí na čase je vytvořit ho.“

„Nemá žádný význam umět se přenést kamkoliv, když je někdo kretén všude.“

„Vím také, že smrt je jediný bůh, který přijde, když ho voláš.“

„Copak mohu lhát, když se mě nikdo na nic neptá?“

„Musíš se stát něčím větším, než jen sám sebou. Uniknout z klece svého života.“

„Můžete tomu říkat paralelní světy, jest-li chcete, alternativní vesmíry, jest-li se vám to líbí víc, anebo výplody choré mysli, když vám to vyhovuje. Já je nazývám stíny.“

„Někdy i zdání může být skutečnost.“

„Nezáleží na výsledku, ale na snaze.“

„Opřel jsem se o zábradlí a rozhlížel se po tváři země.“

„Vždycky nech spící démony ležet.“

“The power to hurt… has evolved in a direct relationship to technological advancement.”

“Never trust a cat, anyway. All they’re good for is stringing tennis racquets.”

““Nothing we did in those days has caused a change.”
“Because of what we did, things remained as they were, rather than getting worse,” I told him.”

“Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything you may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness. Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to insure any possible benefit for which you may be eligible after the destruction of your body, I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure your receiving said benefit. I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen.”

““Why do you tell me this?”
“Perhaps because I am a cat and it amuses me to be arbitrary and do you a good turn.””

“The dead are too much with us.”

“May the blind things at the bottom of the great sea, whose bellies are circles of light,” he said, “recall with pleasure the flavor of your marrow.”

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

“The absence of a monument can, in its own way, be something of a monument also.”

“Between the black of yesterday and the white of tomorrow is the great gray of today, filled with nostalgia and fear of the future.”

“This added the element of mystery that made the comparison inevitable: life is a thing that reminds me quite a bit of the beaches around Tokyo Bay. Anything goes. Strange and unique things are being washed up all the time. I’m one of them and so are you. We spend some time on the beach, maybe side by side, and then that slopping, smelling, chilly thing rakes it with the liquid fingers of a crumbling hand and some of the things are gone again.”

“There’s no need for your pretty lies now. It makes no difference to an old woman the things a young girl believed.”

“My mind spun for a second before it drifted, and in that second I knew that of all pleasures—a drink of cold water when you are thirsty, liquor when you are not, sex, a cigarette after many days without one—there is none of them can compare with sleep. Sleep is best….”

““When you talk about being an ‘anticipator,’ of having a pretty good idea of when something’s going to happen—or how, or who will be there—isn’t that a kind of divination?”
“No. I think it’s more a kind of subconscious knack for dealing with statistics, against a fairly well-known field of actions.””

“Then I could turn around and justify that, by saying that it isn’t really paranoia if there really are people out to get you.”

“Mercy, I have learned, is a thing that is withheld from one whenever he most needs it,” he said. “Yet when he is in a position to grant it himself, those who withheld it previously cry out for it.”

““Beware,” she recited a personal beatitude, “those who hunger and thirst after justice, for we will be satisfied.”
“And beware the meek,” she continued, “for we shall attempt to inherit the Earth.””

“Everything that’s miserable in the world,” Nick the dwarf once said to me, “is because of beauty.”
“Not truth or goodness?” I’d asked.
“Oh, they help. But beauty is the culprit, the real principle of evil.”
“Not wealth?”

“Of all the things a man may do, sleep probably contributes most to keeping him sane. It puts brackets about each day. If you do something foolish or painful today, you get irritated if somebody mentions it, today. If it happened yesterday, though, you can nod or chuckle, as the case may be. You’ve crossed through nothingness or dream to another island in Time.”

“Earth grates on my nerves. It gives me a big pain these days. That’s why I live out here. Earth is overcrowded, bureaucratic, unhealthy, and suffering from too many mass-psychoses to bother classifying.”

“A bizarrerie of fires, cunabulum of light, it moved with a deft, almost dainty deliberation, phasing into and out of existence like a storm-shot piece of evening; or perhaps the darkness between the flares was more akin to its truest nature — swirl of black ashes assembled in prancing cadence to the lowing note of desert wind down the arroyo behind buildings as empty yet filled as the pages of unread books or stillnesses between the notes of a song.”

““Then it is impossible to get an honest answer from you.”
“If by ‘honest answer’ you mean for me to say what you want me to say, whether or not it is true, then I would say that you are correct.””

“My favorite form is the short story. From an aesthetics stand point you really have to pare down to the bone. You can't write a throw-away scene.”

“He doubted that his petition would be heard, however, since he did not feel that the gods would devote much attention to anything emitted from this particular portion of the world.”

“Two days like icebergs—bleak, blank, half-melting, all frigid, mainly out of sight, and definitely a threat to peace of mind—drifted by and were good to put behind.”

“I thought about the Elder Gods and wondered at how they might change things if the way were opened for their return. The world could be a good place or a nasty place without supernatural intervention; we had worked out our own way of doing things, defined our own goods and evils. Some gods were great for individual ideals to be aimed at, rather than actual ends to be sought, here and now. As for the Elders, I could see no profit in intercourse with those who transcend utterly. I like to keep all such things in abstract, Platonic realms and not have to concern myself with physical presences.”

“Toward the bright stars, from the dark ground, he hurled another petition, for whatever it was worth.”

““From the shape of a cloud I know that a man in a distant city will quarrel with his wife three seasons hence and a murderer will be hanged before I finish speaking. From the falling of a stone I know the number of maidens being seduced and the movements of icebergs on the other side of the world. From the texture of the wind I know where next the lightning will fall. So long have I watched and so much am I part of all things, that nothing is hidden from me.”
“You know where I go?”
“Yes.”
“And what I would do there?”
“I know that, too.”
“Then tell me if you know, will I succeed in that which I desire?”
“You will succeed in that which you are about, but by then it may not be what you desire.”
“I do not understand you, Morningstar.”
“I know that, too. But that is the way it is with all oracles, Jack. When that which is foreseen comes to pass, the inquirer is no longer the same person he was when he posed the question. It is impossible to make a man understand what he will become with the passage of time; and it is only a future self to whom a prophecy is truly relevant.””

“I had troubles of my own, and even the most heartening of philosophical vistas is no match for, say, a toothache, if it happens to be your own.”