R. A. Lafferty Quotes
- Though my short stories are the more readable, my novels do have more to say; and they will, if anyone has the patience for it, repay a rereading. - View Quote Details on Though my short stories are the more readable, my novels…
- It was their way of defying that tricky place Earth. That place will hurt you if you let it get the hop on you. They spooked the Earth spooks away with their stories. They whistled in the dark. - View Quote Details on It was their way of defying that tricky place Earth…
- A crisis should have thunder in it. If Finnegan and Dotty had been able to generate a crisis with thunder and lightning, things might have been different. But what if the last anchor-cable parts when no one knows it, and the drift has already begun? This is the crisis come and gone. - View Quote Details on A crisis should have thunder in it. If Finnegan and…
- R. A. Lafferty at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database - View Quote Details on R. A. Lafferty at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- To you who are scattered and broken, gather again and mend. Rebuild always, and again I say rebuild. Renew the face of the earth. It is a loved face, but now it is covered with the webs of tired spiders. - View Quote Details on To you who are scattered and broken, gather again and…
- Put the nightmare together. If you do not wake up screaming, you have not put it together well. - View Quote Details on Put the nightmare together. If you do not wake up…
- Lafferty has the power which sets fire behind your eyeballs. There is warmth, illumination, and a certain joy attendant upon the experience. He’s good. - View Quote Details on Lafferty has the power which sets fire behind your eyeballs…
- Beware of those who manufacture final answers as they go along, of those who will catch you on their catch-phrases and let you perish in the traps. All the final answers were given in the beginning. They stand shining, above and beyond us, but they are always there to be seen. They may be too bright for us, they may be too clear for us. Well then, we must clarify our own eyes. Our task is to grow out until we reach them. - View Quote Details on Beware of those who manufacture final answers as they go…
- The good stories, of course, write themselves. And somebody wants to know who are the really good writers, and how many of them there are. There aren’t any. Most of the writers are likeable frauds. Some are unlikable frauds. - View Quote Details on The good stories, of course, write themselves. And somebody wants…
- The works of R. A. Lafferty (1914-2002) are not too far out be reviewed by an ordinary human being. However, one must reach into an awkwardly positioned dimension to lay hold of them. - View Quote Details on The works of R. A. Lafferty (1914-2002) are not too…
- When you can’t depend on the Devil, who can you depend on? - View Quote Details on When you can’t depend on the Devil, who can you…
- The war was finished. It had lasted ten equivalent years and taken ten million lives. Thus it was neither of long duration nor of serious attrition. It hadn’t any great significance; it was not intended to have. It did not prove a point, since all points had long ago been proven. What it did, perhaps, was to emphasize an aspect, sharpen a concept, underline a trend.
On the whole it was a successful operation. Economically and ecologically it was of healthy effect, and who should grumble?
And after wars, men go home. No, no, men start for home. It’s not the same. - View Quote Details on The war was finished. It had lasted ten equivalent years… - Listen now to a series of sayings that always come hard to brave people. Our own great movement will grow with its own impetus wherever it is not blighted. We will break up persons of blight and centers of blight. But often, and this will be the hard part for all of you to understand, we will warn and advise before we kill. And quite often we will not kill at all. Try to understand this. - View Quote Details on Listen now to a series of sayings that always come…
- No true reader who has read as much as a single story by Raphael Aloysius Lafferty needs to be told that he is our most original writer…. Just about everything Lafferty writes is fun, is witty, is entertaining and playful. But it is not easy, for it is a mingling of allegory with myth, and of both with something more… In fact, he may not be just ours, but the most original writer in the history of literature. - View Quote Details on No true reader who has read as much as a…
- It’s an American classic. - View Quote Details on It’s an American classic.
- The history of the Choctaw Indians has been told before and is still being told, but it has never been told in the way Lafferty tells it… Hannali is a buffalo bull of a man who should become one of the enduring characters in the literature of the American Indian. - View Quote Details on The history of the Choctaw Indians has been told before…
- Paul, there is something very slack about a future that will take a biting satire for a vapid dream. - View Quote Details on Paul, there is something very slack about a future that…
- Or let us say that we have a green thing growing forever. Everything that is done is done by it. And on it we also have the red parasite crunching forever: and everything that is undone is undone by that. The parasite will present itself as a modern thing. It will call itself the Great Change. Less often, and warily, it will call itself the Great Renewal. But it can never be another thing than the Red Failure returned. It is a disease, it is a scarlet fever, a typhoid, a diphtheria; it is the Africa disease, it is the red leprosy, it is the crab-cancer. It is the death of the individual and of the corporate soul. And incidentally, but very often, it is also the death of the individual and of the corporate body. We are asked to swear fealty to the parasite disease which the enemy sowed from the beginning. I will not do it, and I hope that you will not. - View Quote Details on Or let us say that we have a green thing…
- R.A. Lafferty has always been uniquely his own man, but in this book he surpasses himself. It is wild, subtle, demonic, angelic, hilarious, tragic, poetic, a thundering melodrama and a quest into the depths of the human spirit. You’ll think about it for a long time and probably go back to it more than once. - View Quote Details on R.A. Lafferty has always been uniquely his own man, but…
- Wrong Prong, Bong Gong. - View Quote Details on Wrong Prong, Bong Gong.
- True love is that we should hate whatever interferes with our vision of the high and the lowly. - View Quote Details on True love is that we should hate whatever interferes with…
- Sodom and Gomorrah, Texas - View Quote Details on Sodom and Gomorrah, Texas
- [R. A. Lafferty] has to be the maddest, the most colorful, the most unexpected writer alive. - View Quote Details on [R. A. Lafferty] has to be the maddest, the most…
- Characters in Lafferty stories don’t act or speak as normal folks do. Impossible things happen routinely. Indeed, the whole philosophical works are staged like a two-bit vaudeville act, with characters reminiscent of sideshow hucksters and midway card-sharps, promising marvelous prizes with one hand and taking your money with the other, leaving you wondering what the hell this thing is being put into your hands while you’re being shuffled out the back door. But the prize here is the key to the kingdom, and the show is pretty funny. There is in fact no limit to Lafferty’s humor — even the old banana-peel gag will be trotted out if it’ll get a laugh. - View Quote Details on Characters in Lafferty stories don’t act or speak as normal…
- R. A. Lafferty, who died at 87 on March 18, was undoubtedly the finest writer of whatever it was that he did that ever there was. He was a genius, an oddball, a madman. His stories are without precedent… - View Quote Details on R. A. Lafferty, who died at 87 on March 18,…
- The perfect ghost story is the story of Possession,” he said, “and that is hypnotism from beyond the grave. This is possible since hypnotism is by the will, and the will is immortal. A number of notable men have been possessed, and all of their lives seem to fit a pattern: the inconsequential early years, the hiatus when they stood where Faust stood, and the decision. And then the rise to power and influence and almost universal honor after they have made the deal. But it is not themselves, it is the devils within them that gain these things. They are the possessed men who do much of the running of the world, and theirs is the most frightening story that can be imagined. But those who watch the great men do not know that they are shells inhabited by ghosts. - View Quote Details on The perfect ghost story is the story of Possession,” he…
- I write as clearly as I am able to. I sometimes tackle ideas and notions that are relatively complex, and it is very difficult to be sure that I am conveying them in the best way. Anyone who goes beyond cliche phrases and cliche ideas will have this trouble. - View Quote Details on I write as clearly as I am able to. I…
- [In these stories, Lafferty mostly] seems to be writing about places that are not on the map but are real just the same. Lafferty was a traveler in his youth, and he may have glimpsed some of these places on the watery horizon; whether he was sober at the time is not the issue right now…. [Lafferty] has a reading knowledge of all the languages of the Latin, German, and Slavic families, as well as Gaelic and Greek. The army sent him to Morotai, New Guinea and the Philippines, and at one time he could speak pretty good Passar Malay and Tagalog. He turned to writing about six years ago, as a substitute for serious drinking. The tavernkeepers weep while we rejoice: Lafferty’s stories are full of a warm, Bacchic glow, recollected in sobriety — euphoria, comradeship, nostalgia, and the ever-renewed belief that something wonderful may happen. - View Quote Details on [In these stories, Lafferty mostly] seems to be writing about…
- [Lafferty is] one of the few writers who have made me laugh aloud. - View Quote Details on [Lafferty is] one of the few writers who have made…
- Science Fiction has long been babbling about cosmic destructions and the ending of either physical or civilized worlds, but it has all been displaced babble. SF has been carrying on about near-future or far-future destructions and its mind-set will not allow it to realize that the destruction of our world has already happened in the quite recent past, that today is “The Day After The World Ended”…. I am speaking literally about a real happening, the end of the world in which we lived till fairly recent years. The destruction or unstructuring of that world, which is still sometimes referred to as “Western Civilization” or “Modern Civilization”, happened suddenly, some time in the half century between 1912 and 1962. That world, which was “The World” for a few centuries, is gone. Though it ended quite recently, the amnesia concerning its ending is general. Several historiographers have given the opinion that these amnesias are features common to all “ends of worlds”. Nobody now remembers our late world very clearly, and nobody will ever remember it clearly in the natural order of things. It can’t be recollected because recollection is one of the things it took with it when it went… - View Quote Details on Science Fiction has long been babbling about cosmic destructions and…
- There are only two possible statements that can be made about the worlds,” the Black Pope of the Carlist Hills had lectured one day. “Alpha: There is a God. Omega: there is not a God. To adhere to either of these two statements strongly is to be logical at least. Not to do so is to be in the snivelling wasteland between and to have no point of contact with logic or reason. - View Quote Details on There are only two possible statements that can be made…
- What special magic does Lafferty offer? The simple answer has always been his use of language. Well what of it — the field has many who can make a phrase sing or sing a phrase that’s the thing. The true answer lies in that his stories sound like they’re folk tales. Now I said something very precise there. Lafferty doesn’t use the language of folktales, and only rarely uses their rhythm. But he lives so well within the langauge of his creation that his language — particularly in the combination of slightly archaic folk speech and outrageous etymologies for his words — sounds like language that some one has said somewhere. Yevgeny Zamyatin developed the concept of a “prose foot” as way of internal pacing of fiction. He saw it as a kind of rhythmic device that by causing the reader to remember an earlier part of the narrative became a force for a choral (as in pertaining to choruses) cohesion that bound the story together in a different way than plot mechanics. This method, which I can’t detect in Zamyatin’s works (since Russian is Greek to me) is the core of Lafferty’s work. He has has invented the post-modern equivalent of the Homeric epithet. - View Quote Details on What special magic does Lafferty offer? The simple answer has…
About R. A. Lafferty
Raphael Aloysius Lafferty (November 7 1914 - March 18 2002 ) was an American science fiction and fantasy writer, famous for his original use of language, metaphor, and narrative structure, as well as for his etymological wit.
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