Art & Creativity Quote by Jack Vance

Vance is letting you peek behind the curtain, and the peek is almost sly: the “little side excursions” aren’t accidents or indulgences, they’re craft. He frames them as “sometimes” and “some of these,” a hedged modesty that reads like misdirection. Because anyone who knows Vance knows the detours are the point. His books don’t merely travel from plot marker to plot marker; they wander through customs, petty laws, local cuisines, vicious etiquette, baroque slang. Those are the “excursions” that turn a generic quest into a lived-in world with teeth.

The key phrase is “useful.” That word smuggles in a utilitarian defense against the usual complaint: that digression is self-indulgent, that worldbuilding is ornamental. Vance insists the scenic route pays rent. An offhand encounter or weird micro-economy can do what exposition can’t: establish a moral atmosphere, reveal the constraints of a society, show how power hides in manners. A side trip isn’t just color; it’s leverage. It sets stakes by making the universe feel particular enough to lose.

Then there’s the quietly domineering “I manage to fit them in the book somewhere.” It suggests a late-stage puzzle: the writer as editor, tucking gems into the architecture so they look incidental. The subtext is confidence disguised as casualness. Vance is describing an aesthetic of controlled sprawl, where narrative is a spine, but culture is the musculature. The promise to the reader is simple: trust the detour; it’s how the story becomes more than a story.