Gene Wolfe Quotes

Time turns our lies into truth

It's a pity you are a torturer," Ultan said. "You might have been a philosopher.

The instruments you have are the right instruments for you, because you've been shaped by them. That's another law.

In some situations winning consist[s] of disentangling oneself.

Gold is the kindest of all hosts when it shines in the sky, but comes as an evil guest to those who receive it in the hand.

Things opposite unite and appear to disappear. The potential for both remains. That is one of the greatest principles of the causes of things.

It was earliest morning, when even small trees cast long shadows and scarlet foxes trot denward through the dew like flecks of fire.

When a gift is deserved, it is not a gift but a payment.

All beds became deathbeds at last.

Do not start a story unless you have an ending in mind. You can change the story's ending if you wish, but you should always have a destination.

Reason shows reason can only bring pain - how wise to forget and be happy again!

Something like that." "You

Where there is no repentance, forgiveness is only permission by another name. I

Men to whom wine had brought death long before lay by springs of wine and drank still, too stupefied to know their lives were past.

I felt that pressure of time that is perhaps the surest indication we have left childhood behind.

What a many-sided thing is the telling of any tale.

I was trapped in admiration for what I had once admired, as a fly in amber remains the captive of some long-vanished pine.

Have a short story feature two situations, and then let them solve each other.

All novels are fantasies. Some are more honest about it.

People don't want other people to be people.

Don't nobody ever want it to rain," the nearest of the sellers of beasts remarked philosophically, "but everybody wants to go on eatin'.

And yet I loved her still, or would have loved her if I could.

I love you, but you are another death, a death that has stayed with me and befriended me as the old death in the lake did, but death all the same.

In ancient Greece, skeptics were those who thought, not those who scoffed.

I was young, so that I desired high things only.

Though trodden beneath the shepherd's heel, the wild hyacinth blooms on the ground.

Of all the good things in the world, the only ones humanity can claim for itself are stories and music;

There was a time when she did not remember my name or that we were married, but she still remembered that she loved me.

If a man bullies a woman, all the women turn against him. Then the other men mock him because he sleeps alone.

He imagined himself a mouse descending a clear stream in half an eggshell, the master of a comet enfolding a hollow world.

Religion and science have always been matters of faith in something. It is the same something.

Hope is a psychological mechanism unaffected by external realities.

All those who teach are hated.

He wandered in the high, hot lands where men have few laws and many slaves.

It is beyond value, which means it is worthless.

The chief thing is to begin, after all - after which the chief thing is to finish.

Men are said to desire women, Severian. Why do they despise the women they obtain?

That's something I didn't understand until recently: you don't get that degree; it gets you.

You have understood me better than I wanted, as the man said when he looked in the mirror.

There comes a time when a sorcerer must triumph on his own or die.

You think whatever is wrong with you is contagious, then?'
She laughed again. 'Yes, but you have it already. You caught it from your mother. Death.

What a man knows hardly matters. It is what he does.

Weak people believe what is forced on them. Strong people what they wish to believe, forcing that to be real.

Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night, Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to. Flight.

As I drew breath, I heard bone snap - a horrible sound, but a joyful one because the bone was not mine.

Knowledge is soon changed, then lost in the mist, an echo half-heard.

I was miserable before I knew I was no longer happy

Magic," Martha whispered breathlessly, "is diplomacy. It isn't just saying the words. It's who says them, how he says them, and when he says them.

One of the easiest ways to dominate a man is to demand something he cannot supply.

I have seldom found a lot to love about my fellow human beings, even when I liked them;

We have treatments for disturbed persons, Nicholas. But, at least for the time being, we have no treatment for disturbing persons.

I take his gold. I'm hated for that by men who would grovel for it, were it offered to them. Myt-ser

There is no limit to stupidity. - Space itself is said to be bounded by its own curvature, but stupidity continues beyond infinity.

We call for night to hide our acts, But Night, a god, gives God the facts.

There is no magic. There is only knowledge, more or less hidden.

Powerful is the charm of words, which for us reduces to manageable entities all the passions that would otherwise madden and destroy us.

I rejoiced in the flaws that made her more real to me

If you know anything of science, madame, you must know that water is but ice given energy.

One can't found a novel theology on Nothing, and nothing is so secure a foundation as a contradiction.

his body close to the ground, he turned and

Time turns our lies into truths.

We are like children who look at print and see a serpent in the last letter but one, and a sword in the last.

The best offense is a good defense, but a bad defense is offensive.

My definition of good literature is that which can be read by an educated reader, and reread with increased pleasure.

I am filthy. So is Doris, but we'll bathe and change clothes and be clean. Your filth is within you. If it were gone, you'd collapse.

Nations are like men - growing old, never young. My son had the misfortune to be a young man of an old nation.

God is the nest we build together.

There's a certain kind of lonely man who rejects love, because he believes that anyone who offers it wouldn't be a lover worth having.

Every woman is her true age when she sleeps.

He is the oldest of our sons, and although I loved him, I did not like him.

You can't order the waves to be silent, madame," Baldanders told her. "They are coming, and they are bitter with salt.

He paused, and I knew he was delving again in a mind larger and darker than even his great library.

Online publication is fine with me, in part because I hope to collect those stories later.

You never learn how to write a novel. You just learn how to write the novel that you're writing.

That we are capable only of being what we are remains our unforgivable sin.

My rule is never save bits. They get the way, and you don't think of anything new. Put 'em in. Make a big mess.

It is well, I think, for us to learn to tell evil from good; but it has its price, as everything does. We leave our evil friend behind.

I nodded and grasped the woman by the arm; the cataphracts released her and turned away like silver automata.

Catch Catodon ... cast out his conation.

Before you ask more questions, think about whether you really want to know the answers.