R. A. Lafferty - Space Chantey (1968)

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Do you not know that the underground lands are shared by many worlds? It is all one underground, a vast place, and it is but a trick on which globe one will surface on coming out. This is the reason that the inside of every world is so much vaster than the outside. You are fooled by the shape of these little balls on which things live and crawl; you see the universe inside out; you see the orbs as containing and not contained. I will teach you to see it right if you please me.

R. A. Lafferty
It was the most exclusive club in the world, in all the worlds, and this is a mighty pale statement to make about it. Let us emphasize that it was hard to get into.

R. A. Lafferty
Roadstrum had a way of putting it on a little thick himself.
"Be there a man among you who doubts my demesne or destiny, then I have fared in vain," he said. "I bare my throat to the treacherous steel —"
"All right, all right," the three tough crewmen capitulated. We're with you all the way and in everything. Only spare us the 'act.'"

R. A. Lafferty
"For one crime there is no asylum even in the Club," whispered Horace the Snake, who had sharp ears for whispering. "For all other crimes we give asylum, for the most heinous crime in the universe we give no asylum."
"What is the most heinous crime in the universe?" Roadstrum asked.
"Killing a songbird."

R. A. Lafferty
You show signs of levity, and that is the one thing not permitted here. This place is for serious persons only. If you are not serious now, by hell you'll get serious pretty quick!

R. A. Lafferty
As regards very small celestial bodies of a light-minded nature, the law of levity is allowed to supersede the law of gravity.

R. A. Lafferty
I will be double-damned to a better Hell than Hellpepper Planet if I will have my ending here in peace! Peace be not the end of my epic! An epic is already failed if it have an ending. I don't care how it ended the first time — it will not end the same now!

R. A. Lafferty
I am the consummate scientist, Road-Storm. Science has suffered in having her name applied to mechanics, an ugly step-child of hers. Matter herself is a humiliation to the serious. We cannot make it vanish forever, but can make it seem to. For my purpose that is even better. All matter can be modified as long as it is kept subjective. Let us keep it so. … Those who fail to understand my science may call it magic or hypnotism or deception. But it is only my projection of total subjectivity.

R. A. Lafferty
It isn't my profundity that makes me a mental marvel, it's the amazing detail of my perception. There's nobody else who can keep so many things on his mind at once.

R. A. Lafferty
Lend ear while things incredible we bring about
And Spacemen dead and deathless yet we sing about:— And some were weak and wan, and some were strong enough,
And some got home, but damn it took them long enough!

R. A. Lafferty