Miscellaneous Zelazny

He raises the star wand and makes an adjustment.

Then there's what Brand said to Corwin in Sign of the Unicorn. I don't know why this keeps coming back to me, but it does.

“ … Sequence and order, time and stress—they are most important in this matter. … ”

I often recall the latter when I'm writing a particularly convoluted essay.

Looking up one quotation in Lord of Light, I found another.

“ … An army, great in space, may offer opposition in a brief span of time. One man, brief in space, must spread his opposition across a period of many years if he is to have a chance of succeeding. … ”

It's characteristic of Zelazny that even the most trivial sentence should contain an idea, an interesting way of thinking, poetically expressed.

Whenever I have to cross a creek by running and jumping from rock to rock, or do anything similar, I almost always think of the bit in The Hand of Oberon where Ganelon runs across the damaged Pattern.

“So neither of you is going to do it,” Ganelon interrupted. “I am.”

Then, without waiting for a reply, he took a running leap into the black sector, raced along it toward the center, paused long enough to pick up some small object, turned and headed back. Moments later, he stood before us.

“That was a risky thing to do,” Random said.

He nodded.

“But you two would still be debating it if I hadn't.”

Looking at the prose now, I can't explain why it gives me such a strong sense of nimbleness, but it still does.