Quotes by Fritz Leiber

Also, in the dismal Cold Waste, any man treasures illusions, though knowing them almost certainly to be such.

At that instant the hags noisy breathing stopped and with it all other sound. Her eyes opened, showing only whites - milky ovals infinitely eerie in the dark root-tangle of her sharp features and stringy hair. The gray tip of her tongue traveled like a large maggot around her lips.

Fafhrd stopped, again wiped right hand on robe, and held it out. Names Fafhrd. Ef ay ef aitch ar dee.Again the Mouser shook it. Gray Mouser, he said a touch defiantly, as if challenging anyone to laugh at the sobriquet. Excuse me, but how exactly do you pronounce that? Faf-hrud?Just Faf-erd.

What matters is that life is good. It has a lovely texture, like some rich cloth or fur, or the petals of flowers, and everything else worthwhile. And thats as true for the last man as the first.

The dark dangerous forest is still there, my friends. Beyond the space of the astronauts and the astronomers, beyond the dark, tangled regions of Freudian and Jungian psychiatry, beyond the dubious psi-realms of Dr. Rhine, beyond the areas policed by the commissars and priests and motivations-research men, far, far beyond the mad, beat, half-hysterical laughter... the utterly unknown still is and the eerie and ghostly lurk, as much wrapped in mystery as ever.

The result is ... that theres no room left in the world for the weird – though plenty for crude, contemptuous, wisecracking, fun-poking imitations of it.

Miss Millick wondered just what had happened to Mr. Wran. He kept making the strangest remarks when she took dictation. Just this morning he had quickly turned around and asked, Have you ever seen a ghost, Miss Millick? And she had tittered nervously and replied, When I was a girl there was a thing in white that used to come out of the closet in the attic bedroom when you slept there, and moan. Of course it was just my imagination. I was frightened of lots of things. And he had said, I dont mean that traditional kind of ghost. I mean a ghost from the world today, with the soot of the factories in its face and the pounding of machinery in its soul. The kind that would haunt coal yards and slip around at night through deserted office buildings like this one. A real ghost. Not something out of books. And she hadnt known what to say. (Smoke Ghost)

Its a rotten world, Miss Millick, said Mr. Wran, talking at the window. Fit for another morbid growth of superstition. Its time the ghosts, or whatever you call them, took over and began a rule of fear, Theyd be no worse than men. (Smoke Ghost)

It had all begun on the elevated. There was a particular little sea of roots he had grown into the habit of glancing at just as the packed car carrying him homeward lurched around a turn. A dingy, melancholy little world of tar paper, tarred gravel, and smoky brick. Rusty tin chimneys with odd conical hats suggested abandoned listening posts. There was a washed-out advertisement of some ancient patent medicine on the nearest wall. Superficially it was like ten thousand other drab city roofs. But he always saw it around dusk, either in the normal, smoky half-light, or tinged with red by the flat rays of a dirty sunset, or covered by ghostly windblown white sheets of rain-splash, or patched with blackish snow; and it seemed unusually bleak and suggestive, almost beautifully ugly, though in no sense picturesque; dreary but meaningful. Unconsciously it came to symbolize for Catesby Wran certain disagreeable aspects of the frustrated, frightened century in which he lived, the jangled century of hate and heavy industry and Fascist wars. The quick, daily glance into the half darkness became an integral part of his life. Oddly, he never saw it in the morning, for it was then his habit to sit on the other side of the car, his head buried in the paper.One evening toward winter he noticed what seemed to be a shapeless black sack lying on the third roof from the tracks. He did not think about it. It merely registered as an addition to the well-known scene and his memory stored away the impression for further reference. Next evening, however, he decided he had been mistaken in one detail. The object was a roof nearer than he had thought. Its color and texture, and the grimy stains around it, suggested that it was filled with coal dust, which was hardly reasonable. Then, too, the following evening it seemed to have been blown against a rusty ventilator by the wind, which could hardly have happened if it were at all heavy. (Smoke Ghost)

Franz said Your picture, Viki, suggests that sense of breaking-up we feel in the modern world. Families, nations, classes, other loyalty groups falling apart. Things changing before you get to know them. Death on the installment plan – or decay by jumps. Instantaneous birth. Something out of nothing. Reality replacing science fiction so fast that you cant tell which is which. Constant sense of deja-vu - I was here before, but when, how? Even the possibility that theres no real continuity between events, just inexplicable gaps. And of course every gap – every crack – means a new perching place for horror.

Nations are as equal as so many madmen or drunkards.

He who lies artistically, treads closer to the truth than ever he knows.