"When I started writing my first novel, ...And Call Me Conrad, they always say: "Write about what you know" and I said "Well, if I get a nice sort of combination SF and Fantasy with these resonances from Greek Mythology it might be pretty good. It would also give me a chance to start filling in my background on all those things I dont know much about but should if I want to be an SF writer." So I sat down and made a list of everything I felt I should know more about. Astrophysics, oceanography, marine biology, genetics... Then when Id finished the list I read one book in each of these areas. When Id finished I went back and read a second book until Id read ten books in each area. I thought that it wouldnt turn me into a terrific, fantastic expert but Id at least have enough material there to know if I was saying something wrong. And Id also know where to turn to get the information I want to make it right. While I was doing this, to keep the words and cheques flowing I wrote books involving mythology. And once I started picking up things involving astrophysics Id write stories that played with those sorts of things. So thats why I started out with mythology."
Roger Joseph Zelazny was an American fantasy and science fiction writer known for his short stories and novels focusing on mythology and various religions, best known for The Chronicles of Amber series. He won the Nebula Award three times and the Hugo Award six times, including two Hugos for novels: the serialized novel ...And Call Me Conrad (1965), subsequently published under the title This Immo
"Oh, I dont know — thats a hell of a question — I dont tend to look at my stuff that way. I just look at it a book at a time. Something like the Amber books are in a different class. I try not to anticipate. I dont know what Ill be writing a few years from now. I have some ideas — I have lots of different things I want to try. I almost dont really care what history thinks. I like the way Im being treated right now."
"“Ooh,” she said. A pause, then, “Is it sacred?” “No, it’s nicotine,” I answered, “a very ersatz form of divinity.”"
"Knowledge was what he needed. Fear was what he had."
"The days that followed were a game I enjoyed playing. Fake indecision is delicious when people want you to do something."
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us."
"In a world of physical ease, brutal social equality, and reasonable economic equality, exclusiveness in frivolity becomes the most sought-after of all distinctions."
"Now Art, used collectively for painting, sculpture, architecture and music, is the mediatress between, and reconciler of, nature and man. It is, therefore, the power of humanizing nature, of infusing the thoughts and passions of man into everything which is the object of his contemplation."
Samuel Taylor Coleridge"The Good consists in the congruity of a thing with the laws of the reason and the nature of the will, and in its fitness to determine the latter to actualize the former: and it is always discursive. The Beautiful arises from the perceived harmony of an object, whether sight or sound, with the inborn and constitutive rules of the judgment and imagination: and it is always intuitive."
Samuel Taylor Coleridge"I believe that the unity of man as opposed to other living things derives from the fact that man is the conscious life of himself. Man is conscious of himself, of his future, which is death, of his smallness, of his impotence; he is aware of others as others; man is in nature, subject to its laws even if he transcends it with his thought."
Erich Fromm"Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flower Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet? God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations, Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God! God! sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice! Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds! And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow, And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!"
Samuel Taylor Coleridge"All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair — The bees are stirring — birds are on the wing — And Winter slumbering in the open air, Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring! And I the while, the sole unbusy thing, Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing."
Samuel Taylor Coleridge"Taste is the intermediate faculty which connects the active with the passive powers of our nature, the intellect with the senses; and its appointed function is to elevate the images of the latter, while it realizes the ideas of the former."
Samuel Taylor Coleridge