Robert Sheckley quotes - page 6

I know they can't help being young, but isn't there something they can do about being so stupid? (Robert Sheckley)
You argue too damned well! View quote
Robert Sheckley
Time devours our feeble mortality, leaving us with but the sour residue of memory. View quote
Robert Sheckley
There is a great deal of cyberpunk that I admire, especially the work of William Gibson which I think is excellent. Somehow he speaks from his own heart and cyber punk is what comes out. View quote
Robert Sheckley
I was forever reading outside of the field as well as in it. View quote
Robert Sheckley
I don't much like to look back with the idea that I was doing it wrong then or I'm doing it wrong now. View quote
Robert Sheckley
I knew I was doing something right because it was selling so I didn't want to interfere with it. View quote
Robert Sheckley
Action isn't my forte. I'm an expert on contemplation and mild regret. View quote
Robert Sheckley
I sell well now in Russia. I remember one signing in Russia some years ago where the bookstore had two strongmen to hold the crowds back. View quote
Robert Sheckley
I think it can be quite impossible to think well of yourself, so I prefer not to think about that too much. But I am very pleased, obviously. View quote
Robert Sheckley
I would like to do a novel where some curse turns that into how the world really is - a blessing or a curse, I don't know which. (Robert Sheckley)
The British audience was very important to me. I have always looked away from American to non-American audiences and so this was important. View quote
Robert Sheckley
I particularly enjoy working in the fantasy-science-fiction vein. No other category can offer so much scope to a writer. The field can, and does, embrace everything from wildly romantic adventure to satire and social-commentary techniques and approaches. View quote
Robert Sheckley
"Primitive Women!" she scoffed. "Those neurotic creatures! Aren't you happier with me, dear? I may be Modern--but no Primitive Woman could love you the way I do--and I adore you!" Man had never, in all recorded history, been able to live happily with unreconstructed Primitive Woman. The egoistic, spoiled creatures demanded a lifetime of care and attention. View quote
Robert Sheckley
He came to science fiction in 1952; some two or three years later, somebody told him he was writing parables, and Sheckley believed it. The stripped quality of his subsequent work, and its utter divorcement from fact and logic, are traceable to this unfortunate influence. He has a unique touch with a wacky civilization, a clean, compact style, and a satirical wit that is dry without being bitter. View quote
Robert Sheckley
His great attraction is his original and unorthodox point of view. View quote
Robert Sheckley
Sheckley at his best is nobody but Sheckley; his ability to make what may roughly he described as moral points with a sort of genial free-wheeling ingenuity is purely his own. There is also a second-best Sheckley, when it is obvious that he is not trying very hard; then the unlikeliness of his stories becomes tedious and often enough the genial note turns sour and snickery; in this phase, he writes like John Collier in a shabby grotesque mask. There is also a third Sheckley, have none of the Sheckley aura about... View quote
Robert Sheckley
Sheckley at his best is Voltaire-and-soda. His fizzling nihilism expresses itself most pungently at short-story length. View quote
Robert Sheckley
Hard to categorize other than as conjurors - singers of strange, sometimes acutely humorous songs . It is to three of the greatest entertainers in the field that we now turn. Entertainers whose dark, humanistic humour might be said genuinely to reflect the spirit of the decade: Robert Sheckley, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and Philip K. Dick. Sheckley has a wry inventiveness which skates him over profound depths, and a sense of playfulness even in his darkest moments. The 'science' in Sheckley's work is not physics but metaphysics and his protagonists are wide-eyed innocents sent on journeys designed to disillusion the widest-eyed idealist. Thomas Blaine in Immortality Inc. (1959) and Joenes in Journey Beyond Tomorrow (1963) are typical of this Candide archetype. View quote
Robert Sheckley
... a Sheckley stoty was never merely funny. View quote
Robert Sheckley
Esotericism, which is legal, but not too much fun, prescribes to our condition. But when one tries to follow a spiritual path, nothing much happens for most of us. Faced with this lack of results, the esoteric schools put the blame squarely on us rather than on any insufficiency in their doctrines or methods. Finally, they explain our failure by taking refuge in paradoxes. They tell us, for example, that we can attain only by not wanting to attain-a neat double bind. Some esoteric schools caution the disciple not to practise the extraordinary powers which we will acquire in the course of our work. This is surely an extraordinary statement. Most of us can't muster the power to give up smoking, much less to levitate. (Robert Sheckley)
It is not very logical to look over the attributes you possess and then declare that they are the most important attributes in the universe. View quote
Robert Sheckley
All very unreasonable, but Arthur Gammet was beginning to suspect that most wizards were unreasonable people. View quote
Robert Sheckley
That's so like you Terrans,” Melith remarked sadly. "You want responsibility only if it doesn't incur risk. That's a wrong attitude for running a government. View quote
Robert Sheckley
The mind of Human Man is murky and dark,” said Gunga-Sam, "but it is as crystal compared to the mind of Human Woman.” "Where did you get that?” Flaswell asked. "It is an ancient robot proverb. View quote
Robert Sheckley