110 Quotes by Michael Moorcock

Memory is the foundation of identity. Through our sense of identity, we act. We determine our moral judgements. We rewrite our own memories, of course, all the time. We create fresh narratives to use in our survival. We agree on fresh histories enabling us to take action. It is part of what makes us such flawed creatures. Creatures of such narrative fiction creating cause and effect.

I know not which I prefer the look of – those who attack us or that which defends us!

I cannot justify my actions. Roldero had said that men must be judged by their deeds, not their motives. I offer such speculation only n the hope that by understanding our motives we may thus control our deeds.

Yet the place was strangely old-fashioned. The strongest feeling I got from New York at first was nostalgia. A 1930s vision of the future.

Trapped. Sinking. Can’t be myself. Made into what other people expect. Is that everyone’s fate? Were the great individualists the products of their friends who wanted a great individualist as a friend?

There is less danger, gentlemen, in living according to a set of high moral principles than most politicians believe.

Being an imperfect creature in an imperfect world he would always know paradox. And that was why in paradox there was always a kind of truth. That was why philosophers and soothsayers flourished. In a perfect world there would be no place for them. In an imperfect world the mysteries were always without solution and that was why there was always a great choice of solutions.

Arthuriana has become a genre in itself, more like TV soap opera where people think they know the characters. All that’s fair enough, but it does remove the mythic power of the feminine and masculine principles. So I prefer it in its original form, even if you have to wade through Mallory’s ‘Le Morte d’Arthur’ – people smashing people for pages and pages! It still has the resonances of myth about it, which makes it work for me. I don’t want to know if Mordred led an unhappy childhood or not.

They offer you so much power. All that patriarchy! So tempting to take advantage of it.