Gene Wolfe Quotes

Just as mainstream literature shows us how our contemporaries view the present, and historical fiction shows us how they view the past (not, of course, what the present or the past were actually like), so speculative fiction shows us how they view the future. I happen to believe that my contemporaries' view of the past is not very important; but their view of the present is quite definitely important, and their view of the future is vital.

He is not mad. He is only more clever than you. It is not the same.

People who get eyeball arthritis see only what they're supposed to see, like that TV screen.

That the environment should respond to human thought. That is the core of magic and the oldest dream of mankind.

Nobody bothers crazy people. [...] In the end, maybe it's the crazy people who win after all.

When neither our fellows nor our gods spoil our plans, we spoil them ourselves.

Most Christians know next to nothing about the life and teachings of Christ and are afraid to learn, sensing that the knowledge will upset their preconceptions.

If you rob someone who would help you if you needed help you only rob yourself. [...] Do you imagine you can be cruel without teaching others to be cruel to you?

Adolescents are simply those people who haven't as yet chosen between childhood and adulthood. For as long as anyone tries to hold on to the advantages of childhood—the freedom from responsibility, principally—while seeking to lay claim to the best parts of adulthood, such as independence, he is an adolescent. [...] Eventually most people choose to be adults, or are forced into it. A very few retreat into childhood and never leave it again. A large number remain adolescents for life.

We never really got married. When we both wanted to we never had the money, somehow. And when we had the money, there was always some kind of quarrel. After a couple of years everybody thought we were married anyway.

Yours is a race of pawns," Tzadkiel told me. "You move forward only, unless we move you back to begin the game again. But not all the pieces on the board are pawns.

Those who have never fought suppose that the deserter who flies the field is consumed by shame. He is not, or he would not desert; with only trifling exceptions, battles are fought by cowards afraid to run.

We may be damned at last, by God or our consciences; and though I've met a good many people who profess to credit no God, I've never met one who believed he had no conscience—this though he could no more produce it for my inspection than I could point out the God he demanded to see.

Perhaps I need to begin before I can think clearly about the task. The chief thing is to begin, after all—after which the chief thing is to finish.

One of the questions whose answers we seek is why we seek.