Best 27 quotes of Robert Sheckley on MyQuotes

Action isn’t my forte. I’m an expert on contemplation and mild regret.

A lot of us don't want to be quite that serious about world problems. Our life is there to enjoy, not to be an eternal dissident, eternally unhappy with how things are and with the state of mankind.

A novel is often a longer process in handling self-doubt.

As far as the mechanics go, working with other people on received ideas was for me a very interesting technical problem. I can't say that any of my collaborations engaged my heart, but they engaged the craftsman in me.

But science perhaps is very difficult without faith. Also there is no simple way of saying now we have science, we don't need faith anymore.

Ethical and questions of philosophy interest me a great deal.

I do think that short story writing is often a matter of luck.

I have never been a critic of science fiction as a whole.

I like to think that I have no single view nor any single situation that I think things arrive from. I try to give examples of what I think are interesting questions for me.

I'm not so interested any more in how a great deal of science fiction goes. It goes into things like Star Wars and Star Trek which all go excellent in their own way.

I'm not too fond of the hard work and the constant battle with self-doubt that goes on when I write, but I figure that's part of the territory.

I'm quite influenced in this by one of my heroes, Montaigne, who thought a man's real task was to render as honest an account of himself as he could.

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.

It is a truism throughout the civilized galaxy that when you go to the police, your troubles really begin.

It takes me a long time to get with a landscape. It took me 20 years before I wrote anything about Ibiza, and I haven't written about Oregon yet, although I've been there 20 years - possibly I'm almost due.

I was never able to write seriously about heroes because I was very aware that I was not one and that in my background there was not this heroic thing.

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.

Once you find you can't walk as far and as fast as you were able, life becomes more complicated.

Originality is a concept possible only to a limited viewpoint.

Science fiction is very healthy in its form.

So I wrote what I hoped would be science fiction, I was not at all sure if what I wrote would be acceptable even. But I don't say that I consciously wrote with humour. Humour is a part of you that comes out.

The British audience was very important to me. I have always looked away from American to non-American audiences and so this was important.

Wherever you go in the galaxy, you can find a food business, a house-building business, a war business, a peace business, a governing business, and so forth. And, of course, a God business, which is called 'religion,' and which is a particularly reprehensible line of endeavor.

But that's crazy, " George said. "How can I be the Average American Man? I'm only five foot eight and my name is Blaxter spelled with an "l", and I'm of Armenian and Latvian ancestry and I was born in Ship's Bottom, New Jersey. What's that average of, for Chrissakes? They better recheck their results. What they're looking for is some Iowa farmboy with blond hair and a Mercury and 2.4 children." "That's the old, outdated stereotype," the reporter said. "America today is composed of racial and ethnic minorities whose sheer ubiquity precludes the possibility of choosing an Anglo-Saxon model. The average man of today has to be unique to be average, if you see what I mean." The Shaggy Average American Man Story

He created waterfalls for her out of the morning dew, and from the colored pebbles of a meadow stream he made a necklace more beautiful than emeralds, sadder than pearls. She caught him in her net of silken hair, she carried him down, down, into deep and silent waters, past obliteration. He showed her frozen stars and molten sun; she gave him long, entwined shadows and the sound of black velvet. He reached out to her and touched moss, grass, ancient trees, iridescent rocks; her fingertips, striving upwards, brushed old planets and silver moonlight, the flash of comets and the cry of dissolving suns.

It's the deep, fundamental bedrock of hypocrisy upon which religion is founded. Consider: no creature can be said to worship if it does not possess free will. Free will, however, is FREE. And just by virtue of being free, is intractable and incalculable, a truly Godlike gift, the faculty that makes a state of freedom possible. To exist in a state of freedom is a wild, strange thing, and was clearly intended as such. But what to the religions do with this? They say, "Very well, you possess free will; but now you must use your free will to enslave yourself to God and to us." The effrontery of it! God, who would not coerce a fly, is painted as a supreme slavemaster! In the fact of this, any creature with spirit must rebel, must serve God entirely of his own will and volition, or must not serve him at all, thus remaining true to himself and to the faculties God has given him.

‘Shall we go down and have a closer look?’ Hum asked. “ ‘All right. I think we have time — wait! What day is this?’ “Hum calculated silently, then said, ‘The fifth day of Luggat.’ “ ‘Damn,’ Cordovir said. ‘I have to go home and kill my wife.’ “ ‘It’s a few hours before sunset,’ Hum said. ‘I think you have time to do both.’ “Cordovir wasn’t sure. ‘I’d hate to be late.’ “ ‘Well then. You know how fast I am,’ Hum said. ‘If it gets late, I’ll hurry back and kill her myself. How about that?’ “ ‘That’s very decent of you.’ Cordovir thanked the younger man and together they slithered down the steep mountainside.