Vance Quotes & Sayings

The butterfly wallpaper was now gone. It had been replaced by a moody, breathless wallpaper of silver, sprinkled with tiny white dots that looked like stars. It made her feel an odd sense of anticipation, like last night. Grandpa Vance couldn't have come in last night and done this.
Did it really change on its own?
It was beautiful, this wallpaper. It made the room look like living in a cloud. She put her hand against the wall by her dresser. It was soft, like velvet. How could her mother not have told her a room like this existed? She'd never mentioned it. Not even in a bedtime story. — Sarah Addison Allen

Since we are not permitted to act, we are obliged to know. — Jack Vance

Tell a man you have a plan, he may follow you, but he may doubt you in time, question you, and force you to change the plan. Tell a man God gave you a plan, and who dares to question it? — Brad Vance

I'd always been the confident guy in school. I was good in math and English, but I was still shy. I couldn't get up and speak in front of people. I was asked to do it when I was 10 years old and I burst out crying. — Chris Vance

What is peace? Balance three iron skewers tip to tip, one upon the other; at the summit, emplace an egg, so that it too poises static in mid-air, and there you have the condition of peace in this world of men. — Jack Vance

Not all of the white working class struggles. I knew even as a child that there were two separate sets of mores and social pressures. My grandparents embodied one type: old-fashioned, quietly faithful, self-reliant, hardworking. My mother and, increasingly, the entire neighborhood embodied another: consumerist, isolated, angry, distrustful. There — J.D. Vance

One of the greatest errors in the church today is the artificial distinction we have created between accepting Christ as Savior and confessing Him as Lord. We have made two experiences of it, but the New Testament makes them one. — Vance Havner

If you are a Christian, you are not a citizen of this world trying to get to heaven; you are a citizen of heaven making your way through this world. — Vance Havner

God uses broken things. It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength. It is the broken alabaster box that gives forth perfume. It is Peter, weeping bitterly, who returns to greater power than ever. — Vance Havner

Musk loves costume parties as well, and turned up at one dressed like a knight and using a parasol to duel a midget wearing a Darth Vader costume. — Ashlee Vance

Real revival does not begin with joyous singing. It begins with conviction and repentance on the part of Christians. — Vance Havner

were her kids. But the drugs and the late-night fighting revealed troubles that too many hillbilly transplants knew too well. Confronted with such a realization of her own family's struggle, Mamaw — J.D. Vance

Out of the frying pan and into the fire. Chaos begets chaos. Instability begets instability. — J.D. Vance

This was my world: a world of truly irrational behavior. We spend our way into the poorhouse. We buy giant TVs and iPads. Our children wear nice clothes thanks to high-interest credit cards and payday loans. We purchase homes we don't need, refinance them for more spending money, and declare bankruptcy, often leaving them full of garbage in our wake. Thrift is inimical to our being. We spend to pretend that we're upper class. And when the dust clears - when bankruptcy hits or a family member bails us out of our stupidity - there's nothing left over. Nothing for the kids' college tuition, no investment to grow our wealth, no rainy-day fund if someone loses her job. We know we shouldn't spend like this. Sometimes we beat ourselves up over it, but we do it anyway. — J.D. Vance

Plenty of church members are shaky about what they believe, while not many are shaken by what they believe. — Vance Havner

You are evil like all existence ... If power were mine I would crush the universe to bloody gravel and stamp into the ultimate muck! — Jack Vance

A preacher should have the mind of a scholar, the heart of a child, and the hide of a rhinoceros. His problem is how to toughen his hide without hardening his heart. — Vance Havner

The soul would have no rainbow, had the eyes no tears. — John Vance Cheney

Humility is not thinking meanly of oneself, but rather it means not thinking of oneself at all. — Vance Havner

Sometimes some of these little side excursions are useful and I manage to fit them in the book somewhere. — Jack Vance

In The Great Stagnation, Cowen bemoaned the lack of big technological advances and argued that the American economy has slowed and wages have been depressed as a result. "In a figurative sense, the American economy has enjoyed lots of low-hanging fruit since at least the seventeenth century, whether it be free land, lots of immigrant labor, or powerful new technologies," he wrote. "Yet during the last forty years, that low-hanging fruit started disappearing, and we started pretending it was still there. We have failed to recognize that we are at a technological plateau and the trees are more bare than we would like to think. That's it. That is what has gone wrong." In — Ashlee Vance

Jules, I'll tell you now what I would have told you at dinner if you'd been speakin' to me. This," he said, one hand dropping to my bottom and pulling my hips into his, one going up my back to press my torso to his chest, "is the sweetest thing I've had in my life and I haven't even f**ked you yet. I never expected to get a chance at anything so sweet and now that I got it, I'm not gonna let it go. — Kristen Ashley

He does what he wants, and he is relentless about it. It's Elon's world, and the rest of us live in it. — Ashlee Vance

In the field of marketing ... the trend toward selling [has] reached something of a nadir with the unveiling ... of so-called subliminal projection. That is the technique designed to flash messages past our conscious guard. — Vance Packard

Most church members live so far below the standard, you would have to backslide to be in fellowship with them. — Vance Havner

The statistics tell you that kids like me face a grim future - that if they're lucky, they'll manage to avoid welfare; and if they're unlucky, they'll die of a heroin — J.D. Vance

But, for instance, when I was awfully young, I read all the Oz books. They were an enormous influence on me. — Jack Vance

The world is a place of marvels — Jack Vance

I was a precocious child, and I resolved to read everything I could get my hands on, in order to encapsulate the whole of human knowledge. At the time the project seemed less impractical than it does today. I did as best I could and by the time I was ten or elven had read what I suspect was equivalent to a college education. — Jack Vance

The life we've been leading couldn't last forever. It's a wonder it lasted as long as it did. — Jack Vance

Like I've told you before, Beverly, I don't care where we live as long as we're together." Vance ... "The Elder Effect — D.L. Given

Jules's eyes turned to Vance. "I'll go somewhere."
"No," Vance replied.
"I'll go somewhere safe," Jules went on.
Vance got close to Jules and put his hand on her belly. "You think I'm missin' a minute of this Princess, think again."
I swallowed hard, hard.
"Then keep me safe," Julies whispered. — Kristen Ashley

What exists is real; therefore it is tragic, since whatever lives must die. Only fantasy, the vapors rising from sheer nonsense, can now excite my laughter. — Jack Vance

I suffer from a spiritual malaise which manifests itself in outbursts of vicious rage. — Jack Vance

A wife who is 85 percent faithful to her husband is not faithful at all. There is no such thing as part-time loyalty to Jesus Christ. — Vance Havner

I did a lot of work with early 20th century attitudes, the kind of superficial notions and behavior that prompt people who don't know history very well to think that "people were different back then" - but beneath all that are characters who react in ways that we can all recognize, and will always be able to recognize. — James Vance

I am not Cugel the Clever for nothing! — Jack Vance

We need to be preaching a dynamic Gospel and living firecracker lives. — Vance Havner

I'd be dong something creative - something I could express my personality through. I enjoyed working as a gardener before music consumed more of my time. I would probably be still working as a gardener, perhaps, and I wouldn't mind doing odd jobs on the side that were creative, but I'm not sure what they'd be. — Vance Joy

If, after the election, you find a Cy Vance as Secretary of State and a Zbigniew Brzezinski as head of National Security, then I would say we failed. And I'd quit. — Hamilton Jordan

The thermometer of a church is its prayer meeting. — Vance Havner

What our Lord said about cross-bearing and obedience is not in fine type. It is in bold print on the face of the contract. — Vance Havner

Lord Daldace looked about as if seeing the villa for the first time. "What are dreams? Ordinary experience is a dream. The eyes, the ears, the nose: they present pictures on the brain, and these pictures are called 'reality'. At night, when we dream, other pictures, of source unknown, are impinged. Sometimes the dream-images are more real than 'reality'. Which is solid, which illusion? Why trouble to make the distinction? — Jack Vance

God is on the lookout today for a man who will be quiet enough to get a message from Him, brave enough to preach it, and honest enough to live it. — Vance Havner

Somehow the idea has gotten around that it is unchristian to take a stand against heresy. Some of us need to read the New Testament again. — Vance Havner

You can see Musk's embrace of the car as lifestyle in Tesla's abandonment of model years. Tesla does not designate cars as being 2014s or 2015s, and it also doesn't have "all the 2014s in stock must go, go, go and make room for the new cars" sales. It produces the best Model S it can at the time, and that's what the customer receives. This means that Tesla does not develop and hold on to a bunch of new features over the course of the year and then unleash them in a new model all at once. It adds features one by one to the manufacturing line when they're ready. Some customers may be frustrated to miss out on a feature here and there. Tesla, however, manages to deliver most of the upgrades as software updates that everyone gets, providing current Model S owners with pleasant surprises. — Ashlee Vance

Musk had actually started thinking bigger than the Mars Society. Rather than send a few mice into Earth's orbit, Musk wanted to send them to Mars. Some very rough calculations done at the time suggested that the journey would cost $15 million. "He asked if I thought that was crazy," Zachary said. "I asked, 'Do the mice come back? Because, if they don't, yeah, most people will think that's crazy. — Ashlee Vance

I'd never been published when I was young. — Jack Vance

Elon is one of the few people that I feel is more accomplished than I am," said Craig Venter, the man who decoded the human genome and went on to create synthetic lifeforms. At some point he hopes to work with Musk on a type of DNA printer that could be sent to Mars. It would, in theory, allow humans to create medicines, food, and helpful microbes for early settlers of the planet. "I think biological teleportation is what is going to truly enable the colonization of space," he said. "Elon and I have been talking about how this might play out. — Ashlee Vance

Candor is never indiscreet. Truth, which is to say, the reflection of life, is beautiful. — Jack Vance

Musk's vision, and, of late, execution seem to combine the best of Henry Ford and John D. Rockefeller. With — Ashlee Vance

There are no absolute certainties in this universe. A man must try to whip order into a yelping pack of probabilities, and uniform success is impossible. — Jack Vance

Let it never be forgotten that, although we may do nothing about the Word we hear, the Word will do something to us.
The same sun melts ice and hardens clay, and the Word of God humbles or hardens the human heart. — Vance Havner

The angry reaction supports the academic literature on Appalachian Americans. In a December 2000 paper, sociologists Carol A. Markstrom, Sheila K. Marshall, and Robin J. Tryon found that avoidance and wishful-thinking forms of coping "significantly predicted resiliency" among Appalachian teens. Their paper suggests that hillbillies learn from an early age to deal with uncomfortable truths by avoiding them, or by pretending better truths exist. This tendency might make for psychological resilience, but it also makes it hard for Appalachians to look at themselves honestly. We — J.D. Vance

If you take yourself too seriously, you're dead in the water. I think the key to all is to have a laugh, have fun, and express every desire you had, as a kid. — Chris Vance

Your problem, hon, is that you turn every simple box of a problem into a Rubik's Cube. — Brad Vance

Here was a guy who had taken much of the Silicon Valley ethic behind moving quickly and running organizations free of bureaucratic hierarchies and applied it to improving big, fantastic machines and chasing things that had the potential to be real breakthroughs we'd been missing. — Ashlee Vance

The church is so subnormal that if it ever got back to the New Testament normal it would seem to people to be abnormal. — Vance Havner

In the end, death came uniformly to all, and all extracted as much satisfaction from their dying as this essentially graceless process could afford. — Jack Vance

There is no devil in the first two chapters of the Bible and no devil in the last two chapters. Thank God for a book that disposes of the devil! — Vance Havner

But Roy Rockwood, it was science fiction for the sake of science fiction. — Jack Vance

Enough solar energy hits the Earth's surface in about an hour to equal a year's worth of worldwide energy consumption from all sources put together.20 — Ashlee Vance

The life of an editor is not a glamorous one. You're a fixer; you make things better. — Courtney B. Vance

I've never heard anyone else called "the nicest person in the world." For Gail, it's an entirely deserved title. — J.D. Vance

There is great need today for the New Testament prophet who speaks to edification, exhortation, and comfort, a strengthening, stirring and soothing ministry. — Vance Havner

We choose not to work when we should be looking for jobs. — J.D. Vance

Astarte said the jacket reminded her of an ancient demon called The Judge, who separated the righteous from the wicked - and then burned the righteous. — R.E. Vance

It took six years - about four and half more than Musk had once planned - and five hundred people to make this miracle of modern science and business happen. — Ashlee Vance

A Model S can recharge 150 miles of range in 20 minutes at one of Tesla's charging stations with DC power pumping straight into the batteries. By comparison, a Nissan Leaf that maxes out at 80 miles of range can take 8 hours to recharge. — Ashlee Vance

Of all questions, why? is the least pertinent. It begs the question; it assumes the larger part of its own response; to wit, that a sensible response exists. — Jack Vance

Not long after he moved, the mail carrier got embroiled in a battle with the Middletown government over the flock of chickens that he kept in his yard. He treated them just as Mamaw had treated her chickens back in the holler: Every morning he collected all the eggs, and when his chicken population grew too large, he'd take a few of the old ones, wring their necks, and carve them up for meat right in his backyard. You can just imagine a well-bred housewife watching out the window in horror as her Kentucky-born neighbor slaughtered squawking chickens just a few feet away. My sister and I still call the old mail carrier "the chicken man," and years later even a mention of how the city government ganged up on the chicken man could inspire Mamaw's trademark vitriol: "Fucking zoning laws. They can kiss my ruby-red asshole." The — J.D. Vance

I've done a lot of theater, and I know that it's a different audience each time who doesn't know the story, and we have to tell it. — Courtney B. Vance

A soft and sheltered Christianity, afraid to be lean and lone, unwilling to face the storms and brave the heights, will end up fat and foul in the cages of conformity. — Vance Havner

I had to soften him up because, for whatever reason, all the Rock Chicks had an alternate Hot Bunch guy, Indy's was Eddie. Roxie's was Vance. Jules was Luke. Ava's was Lee. Mine was Mace. — Kristen Ashley

We talk about the value of hard work but tell ourselves that the reason we're not working is some perceived unfairness: Obama shut down the coal mines, or all the jobs went to the Chinese. These are the lies we tell ourselves to solve the cognitive dissonance - the broken connection between the world we see and the values we preach. — J.D. Vance

Abraham did not know where he was going immediately, but he knew where he was going ultimately. He did not know the Whither but he knew the Whom. He believed God, and, being sure of his destiny, he did not worry about his destination. — Vance Havner

The last word of our Lord to the church was not the Great Commission. The last thing He said to the church was 'Repent.' He said that to five out of seven. — Vance Havner

One becomes sated with platitudes no less than honey, so that one often breaks another's bones in one's vexation. — Jack Vance

Our efficiency without God's sufficiency is only a deficiency. — Vance Havner

Despite its reputation, Appalachia - especially northern Alabama and Georgia to southern Ohio - has far lower church attendance than the Midwest, parts of the Mountain West, and much of the space between Michigan and Montana. Oddly enough, we think we attend church more than we actually do. In a recent Gallup poll, Southerners and Midwesterners reported the highest rates of church attendance in the country. Yet actual church attendance is much lower in the South. — J.D. Vance

You learn your lines as well as you can and you go in there and go with whatever is thrown at you. Sometimes you don't know whether or not they're going to break the scene up, so you don't have to do it all at one time. — Courtney B. Vance

No command of art,
No toil, can help you hear;
Earth's minstrelsy falls clear
But on the listening heart. — John Vance Cheney

Progress is a farce because man's head and hand have created wonders that stun the imagination, but his heart does not keep step and his morals undo all that his mind has wrought. — Vance Havner

How I hate you," he said softly. "If hate were stone I could build a tower into the clouds. — Jack Vance

Page holds Musk up as a model he wishes others would emulate - a figure that should be replicated during a time in which the businessmen and politicians have fixated on short-term, inconsequential goals. "I don't think we're doing a good job as a society deciding what things are really important to do," Page said. "I think like we're just not educating people in this kind of general way. You should have a pretty broad engineering and scientific background. You should have some leadership training and a bit of MBA training or knowledge of how to run things, organize stuff, and raise money. I don't think most people are doing that, and it's a big problem. Engineers are usually trained in a very fixed area. When you're able to think about all of these disciplines together, you kind of think differently and can dream of much crazier things and how they might work. I think that's really an important thing for the world. That's how we make progress. — Ashlee Vance

I'm tired of hearing sin called sickness and alcoholism a disease. It is the only disease I know of that we're spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year to spread. — Vance Havner

The best part about living with Mamaw was that I began to understand what made her tick. Until then, I had resented how rarely we traveled to Kentucky after Mamaw Blanton's death. The — J.D. Vance

Writing for publication is an odd hybrid of intimate self-exploration and public exhibitionsim. — Talia Vance

We prostrate ourselves before the fish-god Yob, who seems as efficacious as any. — Jack Vance

I'd forgotten how challenging comics can be until I started working on Ropes. Yes, you're restricted by the boundaries of the page, but we all work within technical limitations of some kind. — James Vance

Nothing is needed so much as a holy indignation against sin. It is true that there is not enough love for God, and one sign of it is that there is not enough hatred for sin. — Vance Havner

If you ever think of takin' off, if you ever get scared enough at what I do for a living that you decide you can't hack it, then you best think again because unless what we have turns shit like everything else in my life, I'm not ever letting you go. — Kristen Ashley

You almost wish that Bill and Steve had a genetically engineered love child and, who knows, maybe we should genotype Elon to see if that's what happened. — Ashlee Vance

Psychologists call it "learned helplessness" when a person believes, as I did during my youth, that the choices I made had no effect on the outcomes in my life. — J.D. Vance

Jesus is all we have; he is all we need and all we want. We are shipwrecked on God and stranded on omnipotence! — Vance Havner

As an actor, I never really had a strategy. I just take projects, as they come. It all comes down to the writing, at the end of the day, for me. I don't care if it's a two-line cameo or the lead of the thing, as long as the project has some weight behind the writing and it's interesting and I think people will enjoy it. — Chris Vance

Somewhere there is mystery. It impels one to theosophy: to the worship of a space-god, or a god of light." "Theory dissolves the mystery, though it lays bare a cryptic new stratum. Quite likely there is an endless set of these layers, mystery below mystery. — Jack Vance

Musk kept Riley's attention, and the romance began in earnest. The couple had lunch the next day and then went to the White Cube, a modern art gallery, and then back to Musk's hotel room. Musk told Riley, a virgin, that he wanted to show her his rockets. "I was skeptical, but he did actually show me rocket videos," she said. — Ashlee Vance

The Pew Economic Mobility Project studied how Americans evaluated their chances at economic betterment, and what they found was shocking. There is no group of Americans more pessimistic than working-class whites. Well over half of blacks, Latinos, and college-educated whites expect that their children will fare better economically than they have. Among working-class whites, only 44 percent share that expectation. Even more surprising, 42 percent of working-class whites - by far the highest number in the survey - report that their lives are less economically successful than those of their parents'. In — J.D. Vance

Another thing I liked about my Dad at church: he did his sleeping at home. He never used the church as an adult nursery. — Vance Havner