Roger Zelazny

In the mirrors of the many judgments, my hands are the color of blood. I sometimes fancy myself an evil which exists to oppose other evils; and on that great Day of which the prophets speak but in which they do not truly believe, on the day the world is utterly cleansed of evil, then I too will go down into darkness, swallowing curses. Until then, I will not wash my hands nor let them hang useless.

It is anticipation and recollection that fill the heart__ever the sensation of the moment.

Once past the comfort zone in either direction, humans soon lost the ability to discriminate bad from worse.

Did you ever look back at some moment in your past and have it suddenly grow so vivid that all the intervening years seemed brief, dreamlike, impersonal__he motions of a May afternoon surrendered to routine?

I was not always that way, but perhaps the shadow Earth, where I spent so many years, mellowed me a bit, and maybe my hitch in the dungeons of Amber reminded me somewhat of the quality of human suffering. I do not know. I only know that I could not pass by the hurt I saw on the form of someone much like someone who had once been a friend.

Grief and anger shrink my world, and I resent this. They seem to paralyze my memory of happier times, of friends, places, things; options. Squeezed by the grip of intense, unsettling emotion, I grow smaller in my single-mindedness. I suppose it is partly because I have discarded a range of choices, impairing in some measure my freedom of will. I don't like this, but after a point I have small control over it. It makes me feel that I have surrendered to a kind of determinism, which irritates me even more. Then, vicious cycle, this feeds back into the emotion that drives me and intensifies it. The simple way of ending this situation is the headlong rush to remove its object. The difficult way is more philosophical, a drawing back, the reestablishment of control. As usual, the difficult way is preferable. A headlong rush may also result in a broken neck.

Years have passed, I suppose. I'm not really counting them anymore. But I think of this thing often: Perhaps there is a Golden Age someplace, a Renaissance for me sometime, a special time somewhere, somewhere but a ticket, a visa, a diary-page away. I don't know where or when. Who does? Where are all the rains of yesterday?In the invisible city?Inside me?It is cold and quiet outside and the horizon is infinity. There is no sense of movement.There is no moon, and the stars are very bright, like broken diamonds, all.

I'm very gullible when it comes to my own words. I believe everything I say, though I know I am a liar.

The four points of the compass be logic, knowledge, wisdom and the unknown....To bow before the one is to lose sight of the three.

It is a pain in the ass waiting around for someone to try to kill you.

No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words.

To paraphrase Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear, and all those guys, "I wish I had known this some time ago.

Why could you not have left me as I was, in the sea of being?""Because the world has need of your humility, your piety, your great teaching and your Machiavellian scheming.

There's no such thing as civilization. The word just means the art of living in cities.

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.

Nobody steals books but your friends.

Then you must reconcile yourself to the fact that something is always hurt by any change. If you do this, you will not be hurt yourself.

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.