Robert Sheckley Quotes & Sayings

Is there anything you can do?'
'Well, in college I was studying-'
'Don't give me your goddamned life story! I'm interested in your trade, skill, talent, profession, ability, whatever you want to call it. What, specifically, can you do?'
'Well,'Marvin said, 'I guess, when you put it that way, I can't do anything much. — Robert Sheckley

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

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. — Robert Sheckley

Sanity is a matter of consensus. — Robert Sheckley

The ingenious way in which Dennison and his colleagues broke out of their seemingly impregnable prison, using only a steel belt buckle, a tungsten filament, three hens' eggs, and twelve chemicals that can be readily obtained from the human body, is too well known to be repeated here. — Robert Sheckley

The aim of intelligence is to put the whole goddamned human race out of work. — Robert Sheckley

Science fiction is very healthy in its form. — Robert Sheckley

He shared the common human hallmark: he was simultaneously predictable and unfathomable -- a routine miracle. — 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. — Robert Sheckley

- "What is reality?"
- "One of the many possible illusions. — Robert Sheckley

Number 402, your name is Will Barrent. Age 27, blood type O-L3, Index JX-221-R. Guilty of murder. — Robert Sheckley

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

Ethical and questions of philosophy interest me a great deal. — Robert Sheckley

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. — Robert Sheckley

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. — Robert Sheckley

Most of Seakirk's inhabitants were indifferent to the spectacle of corruption in high places and low, the gambling, the gang wars, the teen-age drinking. They were used to the sight of their roads crumbling, their ancient water mains bursting, their power plants breaking down, their decrepit old buildings falling apart, while the bosses built bigger homes, longer swimming pools and warmer stables. People were used to it. — Robert Sheckley

Overhead, a Hawk was zeroing in on a watchbird. The armored murder machine had learned a lot in a few days. Its sole function was to kill. At present it was impelled toward a certain type of living organism, metallic like itself. But the Hawk had just discovered that there were other types of living organisms, too - Which had to be murdered. — Robert Sheckley

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. — Robert Sheckley

You must realize, Mr. Blaine, that a man is not his body, for he receives his body accidentally. He is not his skills, for those are frequently born of necessity. He is not his talents, which are produced by heredity and by early environmental factors. He is not the sicknesses to which he may be predisposed, and he is not the environment that shapes him. — Robert Sheckley

I have simply given up a longevity which I never possessed anyhow. I have turned away from the con game which the gods run in their heavenly side-show. I no longer care under which shell the pea of immortality might be found. I don't need it. I have my moment which is quite enough. — Robert Sheckley

The Shits played raucous music, which was danced to by immature virgins in middleless dresses. — Robert Sheckley

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. — Robert Sheckley

Originality is a concept possible only to a limited viewpoint. — Robert Sheckley

An error which is not perpetuated cannot be viewed as any error at all. — Robert Sheckley

Why in God's name should a God be praised if he is only performing his Godly function? — Robert Sheckley

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

Very well, you possess free will; but now you must use your free will to enslave yourself to God and to us. — Robert Sheckley

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. — Robert Sheckley

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. — Robert Sheckley

She was an extremely attractive woman if you liked the type, which could best be described as homicidal schizophrenic paranoiac with kittenish overtones. — 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. — Robert Sheckley

A man is not his body, for he receives his body accidentally. He is not his skills, for those are frequently born of necessity. He is not his talents, which are produced by heredity and by early environmental factors. He is not the sicknesses to which he may be predisposed, and he is not the environment that shapes him. A man contains all these things, but he is greater than their total. — Robert Sheckley

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. — Robert Sheckley

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. — 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

Dead or alive, you will retain all your rights. — Robert Sheckley

I was forever reading outside of the field as well as in it. — Robert Sheckley

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. — Robert Sheckley

I've always thought of absurdism as a French fad I'd like to belong to. — Robert Sheckley

Here she was trying to teach him the Peasant Shuffle. He could not hope to master it all in a night, of course; at the Peasants' School in Zug they had spent an entire semester on Cringing alone. — 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. — Robert Sheckley

I knew I was doing something right because it was selling so I didn't want to interfere with it. — Robert Sheckley

For love, as he knew it, was an aberration, a form of temporary insanity, a shortlived state of autosuggestion.
Love was a state which a wise man would prudently avoid. — Robert Sheckley

All of us live by the employment of countless untested assumptions, the truth of falsehood of which we can determine only through the hazard of our lives. Since most of us value our lives more than the truth, we leave such drastic tests for the fanatics. — 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. — Robert Sheckley

Action isn't my forte. I'm an expert on contemplation and mild regret. — Robert Sheckley

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. — Robert Sheckley

Rememberatorium), — Robert Sheckley

The absurdist stuff wasn't terribly popular at the time I was doing it. — Robert Sheckley

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

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. — Robert Sheckley

A great majority of Terrans were idealists, and they believed fervently in concepts such as truth, justice, mercy, and the like. And not only did they believe, they also let those noble concepts guide their actions - except when it would be inconvenient or unprofitable. When that happened, they acted expediently, but continued to talk moralistically. This meant that they were "hypocrites" - a term which every race has its counterpart of. — Robert Sheckley

I don't finish every story, but I probably write and send out three out of five of them. — 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. — Robert Sheckley

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. — Robert Sheckley

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