“People don't want other people to be people.”
Gene Wolfe“Knowledge is soon changed, then lost in the mist, an echo half-heard.”
Gene Wolfe“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.”
Gene Wolfe“I had turned my mind from my survival just as a man suffering from a deadly sickness manages by a thousand tricks never to look at death squarely; or rather, as a woman alone in a large house refrains from looking into mirrors, and instead busies herself with trivial errands, so that she may catch no glimpse of the thing whose feet she hears at times on the stairs.”
Gene Wolfe“You never learn how to write a novel. You just learn how to write the novel that you're writing.”
Gene Wolfe“How big is a man's life?" asked Ultan."I have no way of knowing, but isn't it larger than that?""You see it from the beginning, and anticipate much. I, recollecting it from its termination, know how little there has been. I suppose that is why the depraved creatures who devour the bodies of the dead seek more.”
Gene Wolfe“Once or twice I saw evidence that rats had been nesting among the books, rearranging them to make snug two and three-level homes for themselves and smearing dung on the covers to form the rude characters of their speech.”
Gene Wolfe“If Thecla had symbolized love of which I felt myself undeserving, as I know now that she did, then did her symbolic force disappear when I locked the door of her cell behind me? That would be like saying that the writing of this book, over which I have labored for so many watches, will vanish in a blur of vermillion when I close it for the last time and dispatch it to the eternal library maintained by the old Ultan. The great question then, that I pondered as I watched the floating island with longing eyes and chafed at my bonds and cursed the hetman in my heart, is that of determining what these symbols mean in and of themselves. We are like children who look at print and see a serpent in the last letter but one, and a sword in the last.”
Gene Wolfe“The castle? The monster? The man of learning? I only just thought of it. Surely you know that just as the momentous events of the past cast their shadows down the ages, so now, when the sun is drawing toward the dark,our own shadows race into the past to trouble mankind's dreams.”
Gene Wolfe“My definition of good literature is that which can be read by an educated reader, and reread with increased pleasure.”
Gene Wolfe“Reality is a crutch for people who can't handle science fiction.”
Gene Wolfe