Frasi di Edgar Rice Burroughs

“E così, nel cuore di una città dove infuriava un conflitto selvaggio, piena di grida guerresche, mentre la morte e la distruzione mietevano dovunque un sanguinoso raccolto, Dejah Thoris, Principessa di Helium, vera figlia di Marte, Dio della Guerra, si promise in sposa a John Carter, gentiluomo della Virginia”

“Credo davvero che il modo di comportarsi di un uomo con una donna sia inversamente proporzionale al suo coraggio con gli individui del suo stesso sesso. I deboli e i citrulli sono spesso abilissimi nell'incantare le donne, mentre i guerrieri che affrontano impavidi mille pericoli si ritirano nell'ombra come bambini spaventati.”

“Poche meraviglie del West suscitano più stupore delle bellezze di un paesaggio dell'Arizona illuminato dalla luna: lo splendore argenteo delle montagne in lontananza, gli strani chiaroscuri dei crinali e degli arroyo e i grotteschi particolari dei cactus, rigidi e meravigliosi, formano un dipinto allo stesso tempo incantato ed evocatore: come se quello fosse il primo sguardo su un mondo morto e dimenticato, tanto il suo aspetto è diverso da quello di ogni altro luogo sulla faccia della Terra.”

“Sono molto vecchio, non so esattamente quanto. Forse ho cento anni, forse più; ma non posso dirlo perché non sono mai invecchiato come gli altri uomini e non ricordo neppure di avere avuto un'infanzia. Fin dove la mia memoria arriva, ricordo di essere sempre stato adulto: un uomo di circa trent'anni. Oggi il mio aspetto è identico a quello di quaranta e più anni fa, eppure sento che non posso continuare a vivere per sempre; che un giorno affronterò la vera morte dalla quale non c'è resurrezione. Non so perché dovrei temere la morte, io che sono morto due volte e sono sempre in vita, tuttavia, al pensiero, provo lo stesso orrore che provate voi, che non siete mai morti. Ed è proprio a causa del terrore della morte, credo, che sono così convinto che morirò sul serio, questa volta.”

“Ho fatto molte cose strane nella mia vita, cose che uomini più saggi di me non avrebbero osato, ma neppure nelle mie più accese fantasie avrei sognato di conquistare una Dejah Thoris… poiché mai avevo sognato che in tutto l'universo potesse esistere una donna come la principessa di Helium. Che tu sia una principessa non mi mette in soggezione, ma che tu sia tu, questo basta a farmi dubitare della mia sanità mentale nel chiederti, mia principessa, di essere mia.”

“Mentre siedo qui, questa sera, nel mio studio affacciato sull'Hudson, già vent'anni sono passati da quando ho aperto per la prima volta i miei occhi su Marte.
Posso vederlo risplendere nel cielo dalla piccola finestra accanto alla mia scrivania, e questa notte sembra chiamarmi di nuovo, come non mi ha più chiamato da quella notte perduta nel passato, e mi sembra quasi di vedere, nel tremendo abisso dello spazio, una meravigliosa donna dai capelli neri in piedi nei giardini del palazzo, e accanto a lei un bambino che l'abbraccia mentre lei gli indica nel cielo il pianeta Terra, e ai loro piedi un'orrenda creatura dal cuore d'oro.
Credo che mi stiano aspettando, lassù, e qualcosa mi dice che lo saprò molto presto.”

“No fiction is worth reading except for entertainment. If it entertains and is clean, it is good literature, or its kind. If it forms the habit of reading, in people who might not read otherwise, it is the best literature.”

“In one respect at least the Martians are a happy people, they have no lawyers.”

“If I had followed my better judgment always, my life would have been a very dull one.”

“The time has arrived when patience becomes a crime and mayhem appears garbed in a manner of virtue”

“A warrior may change his metal, but not his heart.”

“You are here for but an instant, and you mustn't take yourself too seriously”

“For myself, I always assume that a lion is ferocious, and so I am never caught off my guard.”

“It is a characteristic of the weak and criminal to attribute to others the misfortunes that are the result of their own wickedness.”

“Imagination is but another name for super intelligence.”

“Yes, I was a fool, but I was in love, and though I was suffering the greatest misery I had ever known I would not have had it otherwise for all the riches of Barsoom. Such is love, and such are lovers wherever love is known.”

“I had this story from one who had no business to tell it to me, or to any other.”

“I love you, and because I love you I believe in you. But if I did not believe, still should I love. Had you come back for me, and had there been no other way, I would have gone into the jungle with you - forever.”

“I shall have to believe even though I cannot understand.”

“He commenced a systematic search of the cabin; but his attention was soon riveted by the books which seemed to exert a strange and powerful influence over him, so that he could scarce attend to aught else for the lure of the wondrous puzzle which their purpose presented to him.
Among the other books were a primer, some child's readers, numerous picture books, and a great dictionary. All of these he examined, but the pictures caught his fancy most, though the strange little bugs which covered the pages where there were no pictures excited his wonder and deepest thought.”

“Tarzan of the Apes had decided to mark his evolution from the lower orders in every possible manner, and nothing seemed to him a more distinguishing badge of manhood than ornaments and clothing.
To this end, therefore, he collected the various arm and leg ornaments he had taken from the black warriors who had succumbed to his swift and silent noose, and donned them all after the way he had seen them worn.
About his neck hung the golden chain from which depended the diamond encrusted locket of his mother, the Lady Alice. At his back was a quiver of arrows slung from a leathern shoulder belt, another piece of loot from some vanquished black.
About his waist was a belt of tiny strips of rawhide fashioned by himself as a support for the home-made scabbard in which hung his father's hunting knife. The long bow which had been Kulonga's hung over his left shoulder.
The young Lord Greystoke was indeed a strange and war-like figure, his mass of black hair falling to his shoulders behind and cut with his hunting knife to a rude bang upon his forehead, that it might not fall before his eyes.
His straight and perfect figure, muscled as the best of the ancient Roman gladiators must have been muscled, and yet with the soft and sinuous curves of a Greek god, told at a glance the wondrous combination of enormous strength with suppleness and speed.”

“Now was the quiet, fierce solitude of the primeval forest broken by new, strange cries. No longer was there safety for bird or beast. Man had come.
Other animals passed up and down the jungle by day and by night — fierce, cruel beasts — but their weaker neighbors only fled from their immediate vicinity to return again when the danger was past.
With man it is different. When he comes many of the larger animals instinctively leave the district entirely, seldom if ever to return; and thus it has always been with the great anthropoids. They flee man as man flees a pestilence.”

“Tarzan let him up, and in a few minutes all were back at their vocations, as though naught had occurred to mar the tranquility of their primeval forest haunts.
But deep in the minds of the apes was rooted the conviction that Tarzan was a mighty fighter and a strange creature. Strange because he had had it in his power to kill his enemy, but had allowed him to live — unharmed.”

“Kerchak was dead.
Withdrawing the knife that had so often rendered him master of far mightier muscles than his own, Tarzan of the Apes placed his foot upon the neck of his vanquished enemy, and once again, loud through the forest rang the fierce, wild cry of the conqueror.
And thus came the young Lord Greystoke into the kingship of the Apes.”

“In his leisure Clayton read, often aloud to his wife, from the store of books he had brought for their new home. Among these were many for little children — picture books, primers, readers — for they had known that their little child would be old enough for such before they might hope to return to England.”

“Tarzan of the Apes, young and savage beast of the jungle, wondered at the cruel brutality of his own kind.
Sheeta, the leopard, alone of all the jungle folk, tortured his prey. The ethics of all the others meted a quick and merciful death to their victims.
Tarzan had learned from his books but scattered fragments of the ways of human beings.”

“I do not say the story is true, for I did not witness the happenings which it portrays, but the fact that in the telling of it to you I have taken fictitious names for the principal characters quite sufficiently evidences the sincerity of my own belief that it may be true.
The yellow, mildewed pages of the diary of a man long dead, and the records of the Colonial Office dovetail perfectly with the narrative of my convivial host, and so I give you the story as I painstakingly pieced it out from these several various agencies.
If you do not find it credible you will at least be as one with me in acknowledging that it is unique, remarkable, and interesting.”

“I sold electric light bulbs to janitors, candy to drug stores, and Stoddard's Lectures from door to door. I had decided I was a total failure, when I saw an advertisement which indicated that somebody wanted an expert accountant. Not knowing anything about its I applied for the job and got it.
I am convinced that what are commonly known as "the breaks," good or bad, have fully as much to do with one's success or failure as ability. The break I got in this instance lay in the fact that my employer knew even less about the duties of an expert accountant than I did.”

“Tarzan must act quickly or his prey would be gone; but Tarzan's life training left so little space between decision and action when an emergency confronted him that there was not even room for the shadow of a thought between.”

“I determined there was a great future in the mail-order business, and I landed a job that brought me to the head of a large department. About this time our daughter Joan was born.
Having a good job and every prospect for advancement, I decided to go into business for myself, with harrowing results. I had no capital when I started and less when I got through. At this time the mail-order company offered me an excellent position if I wanted to come back If I had accepted it, I would probably have been fixed for life with a good living salary. Yet the chances are that I would never have written a story, which proves that occasionally it is better to do the wrong thing than the right.
When my independent business sank without a trace, I approached as near financial nadir as one may reach. My son, Hulbert, had just been born. I had no job, and no money. I had to pawn Mrs, Burroughs' jewelry and my watch in order to buy food. I loathed poverty, and I should have liked to have put my hands on the man who said that poverty is an honorable estate. It is an indication of inefficiency and nothing more. There is nothing honorable or fine about it. To be poor is quite bad enough. But to be poor without hope … well, the only way to understand it is to be it.”

“I had gone thoroughly through some of the all-fiction magazines and I made up my mind that if people were paid for writing such rot as I read I could write stories just as rotten. Although I had never written a story, I knew absolutely that I could write stories just as entertaining and probably a lot more so than any I chanced to read in those magazines.
I knew nothing about the technique of story writing, and now, after eighteen years of writing, I still know nothing about the technique, although with the publication of my new novel, Tarzan and the Lost Empire, there are 31 books on my list. I had never met an editor, or an author or a publisher. l had no idea of how to submit a story or what I could expect in payment. Had I known anything about it at all I would never have thought of submitting half a novel; but that is what I did.
Thomas Newell Metcalf, who was then editor of The All-Story magazine, published by Munsey, wrote me that he liked the first half of a story I had sent him, and if the second half was as good he thought he might use it. Had he not given me this encouragement, I would never have finished the story, and my writing career would have been at an end, since l was not writing because of any urge to write, nor for any particular love of writing. l was writing because I had a wife and two babies, a combination which does not work well without money.”

“The story of his own connection with the cabin had never been told him. The language of the apes had so few words that they could talk but little of what they had seen in the cabin, having no words to accurately describe either the strange people or their belongings, and so, long before Tarzan was old enough to understand, the subject had been forgotten by the tribe.
Only in a dim, vague way had Kala explained to him that his father had been a strange white ape, but he did not know that Kala was not his own mother.”

“Though but ten years old he was fully as strong as the average man of thirty, and far more agile than the most practiced athlete ever becomes. And day by day his strength was increasing.
His life among these fierce apes had been happy; for his recollection held no other life, nor did he know that there existed within the universe aught else than his little forest and the wild jungle animals with which he was familiar.
He was nearly ten before he commenced to realize that a great difference existed between himself and his fellows. His little body, burned brown by exposure, suddenly caused him feelings of intense shame, for he realized that it was entirely hairless, like some low snake, or other reptile.”

“I have often been asked how I came to write. The best answer is that I needed the money. When I started I was 35 and had failed in every enterprise I had ever attempted.”

“Tarzan of the Apes lived on in his wild, jungle existence with little change for several years, only that he grew stronger and wiser, and learned from his books more and more of the strange worlds which lay somewhere outside his primeval forest.”