Avram Davidson Quotes

27 Sourced Quotes

Sorcery works against Nature, magic works with it.

Avram Davidson
She spun, as a matter of form and status alone, her woollen yarn and her oft-breaking thread. What else did she spin? he wondered. And the answer, not spoken aloud, was, a web.
And one that now seemed sure to hold him fast.
To hold him fast indeed.

Avram Davidson
It is not a very interesting night market, anyway. No wonderful things are sold there, though often one wonders, next day, how one could have bought them...

Avram Davidson
Surely you'll at least see the Temple? Respect all religions, is my motto, believe in none. Sensible principle. Still, you know, must say, after all, two thousand beautiful priestesses! All ready, willing, able—and I must say—dextrous!— to do their best to inspire male worshippers with love for their goddess, hah-hah!

Avram Davidson
And then in that, admittedly magnificent, abrupt moment you saw what I concede without argument was the face of rather an attractive wench, and—Zeus! you weren't thinking, man—you were simply reacting. It wasn't your heart, it was your codpiece that the impulse came from!

Avram Davidson
It's not a matter of who runs first or who runs last. It's merely a matter of who gets caught.

Avram Davidson
Everything meant something, still, some meanings were revealed sooner than others. And that some were seemingly never revealed in no way disproved the fact.

Avram Davidson
It is not in the nature of any people that it should willingly endure being ruled by another people, whether it is ruled ill or ruled well.

Avram Davidson
Suppose Sisyphus to have been acquitted his need of forever toiling up his hill in Hell, would he have made the last journey in joy? Or would mere fatigue have extinguished all other emotion, as a torch extinguished in a sconce?

Avram Davidson
It was but that, seeing him and so imagining that something about him was otherwise, automatically they feared him.

Avram Davidson
Rumor, I fear, is scarcely as accurate as he is rapid.

Avram Davidson
It had not been precisely a fruitful meeting, but it had been a long one.

Avram Davidson
Drew a knife on us, one muttered, with the sullen rage of the bully who feels wronged when resisted.

Avram Davidson
Things oughtn't to be the way they are, altogether. But letting a madman burn down the barn is no way to improve them.

Avram Davidson
Seven cities claimed blind Homer, dead,
Through which blind Homer, living, begged his bread.

Avram Davidson
Clearly this was no time to ask if they should first define their terms. Nor, for that matter, had Socrates had to define the bowl of hemlock.

Avram Davidson
Hmm... hmm. A stag hunt. To what elaborate lengths the equestrian classes go in order to draw out the simple business of butchering venison.

Avram Davidson
Tell him you'll pay any fine within reason. That dragon-cod can't even read his own name unless it's written in gold ink.

Avram Davidson
The ceremony was long and intricate, probably none of them could have explained why half of it was done, and the explanations for the other half would probably have been thoroughly incorrect.

Avram Davidson
These precautions, perhaps because they had been taken, proved unnecessary.

Avram Davidson
There was an inn... which kept no register of... a number of seamstresses and tailors who lacked time and place and perhaps inclination to weave the cloths they cut and sewed, depending instead on the activities of those who preferred not to vex the original owners with the tiresome bookkeeping inseparable from purchase.

Avram Davidson
A querulous whine that was almost a question was succeeded by a deep gobble that was almost an answer.

Avram Davidson
Though you expel Nature with a pitchfork, she will always return.

Avram Davidson
There may be someone here who knows less about all this than I do, Clemens said, but I can't imagine who.

Avram Davidson
The beast is always doomed. It's better to face the fact honestly and not pretty it up with a lot of lies about blowing off steam and reducing tensions and getting rid of this and that, acting out anxieties, moment of truth. Piddle. There's an ancient word, I don't know what language it is. Bazazz. All those arguments are a lot of bazazz. Unless you're wiping out vermin or hunting for meat to eat, the man who kills animals does so because he likes to kill. And people who like to watch do so because they like to see things being killed.

Avram Davidson
What is cheaper than lust or of less value than alchemy or aphrodisiacs?

Avram Davidson
But the Red Man denied that time, though it must always be paid for, could always be paid for in money.

Avram Davidson