# Quote — Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light

> Vishnu, in his wisdom, had seen that there must be a balance between the metropolis and the wilderness. While wilderness can exist independent of cities, that which dwells within a city requires more than the tamed plants of a pleasance. If the world were all city, he had reasoned, the dwellers within it would turn a portion of it into a wilderness, for there is that within them all which desires that somewhere there be an end to order and a beginning of chaos. So, within his mind there had grown up a forest, pumping forth streams and the smells of growth and decay, uttering the cries of the uncitied creatures who dwelled within its shadows, shrugging in the wind and glistening in the rain, falling down and growing up again.

- Author: [Roger Zelazny](https://www.leafyquotes.com/roger-zelazny.md)
- Book: [Lord of Light](https://www.leafyquotes.com/roger-zelazny/lord-of-light.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lord_of_Light#FIVE) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/roger-zelazny/lord-of-light/vishnu-in-his

## More from this book

> I do not have the time to give you more than my contempt.

p. 181 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/roger-zelazny/lord-of-light/i-do-not.md)

> I shall return to being a man, and I shall let the people keep the Buddha who is in their hearts. Whatever the source, the message was pure, believe me. That is the only reason it took root and grew.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/roger-zelazny/lord-of-light/i-shall-return.md)

> "I decided that mankind could live better without gods. If I disposed of them all, people could start having can openers and cans to open again, and things like that, without fearing the wrath of Heaven. We've stepped on these poor fools enough. I wanted to give them a chance to be free, to build what they wanted."
>
> "But they live, and they live and they live."
>
> "Sometimes, and sometimes not. So do the gods."
>
> "You were about the last Accelerationist left in the world, Sam. No one would have thought you were also the deadliest."

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/roger-zelazny/lord-of-light/i-decided-that.md)