Roger Zelazny: If a building is falling on you, you don't concern your...

I saw my earlier selves as different people, acquaintances I had outgrown. I wondered how I could ever have been some of them.

Roger Zelazny

different self people

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.

Roger Zelazny

success doors motivational

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.

Roger Zelazny

wall wise beautiful

Occasionally, there arises a writing situation where you see an alternative to what you are doing, a mad, wild gamble of a way for handling something, which may leave you looking stupid, ridiculous or brilliant -you just don't know which. You can play it safe there, too, and proceed along the route you'd mapped out for yourself. Or you can trust your personal demon who delivered that crazy idea in the first place. Trust your demon.

Roger Zelazny

crazy stupid writing

The death of an illusion tends to disconcert.

Roger Zelazny

illusion

Dwelling beside a body of water is tonic for the weary psyche. Sea smells, sea birds, seawrack, sands - alternately cool, warm, moist and dry - a taste of brine and the presence of the rocking, slopping bluegraygreen spit-flecked waters, has the effect of rinsing the emotions, bathing the outlook, bleaching the conscience.

Roger Zelazny

smell dwelling sea

The function of criticism should not be confused with the function of reform.

Roger Zelazny

confused reform criticism

When inspiration is silent reason tires quickly.

Roger Zelazny

silent tire inspiration

I try to sit down at the typewriter four times a day, even if it's only five minutes, and write three sentences.

Roger Zelazny

typewriters writing trying

Don't wake me for the end of the world unless it has very good special effects.

Roger Zelazny

apocalypse special world

His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god, but then he never claimed not to be a god.

Roger Zelazny

atman followers said

There's really nothing quite like someone's wanting you dead to make you want to go on living.

Roger Zelazny

wanting-you goes-on want

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.

Roger Zelazny

mirrors believe blood

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

Roger Zelazny

advancement technological hurt

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.

Roger Zelazny

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

Roger Zelazny

oedipus guy wish

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.

Roger Zelazny

making-love elephants age

I know, too, that death is the only god who comes when you call.

Roger Zelazny

mythology knows

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.

Roger Zelazny

burning light dream

The enemy of the moment is not as important as our own inner weakness. If this is not mended we are already defeated, though no foreign conqueror stands within our walls.

Roger Zelazny

wall important enemy

If a building is falling on you, you don't concern yourself with the horn of an approaching car. You deal with the most immediate peril first. That's survival.