Gene Wolfe Quotes

Of the nature of Death and the Dead we may enumerate twelve kinds. First there are those who become new gods, for whom new universes are born. Second those who praise. Third those who fight as soldiers in the unending war with evil. Fourth those who amuse themselves among flowers and sweet springs with sports. Fifth those who dwell in gardens of bliss, or are tortured. Sixth those who continue as in life. Seventh those who turn the wheel of the universe. Eighth those who find in their graves their mothers' wombs and in one life circle forever. Ninth ghosts. Tenth those born again as men in their grandsons' time. Eleventh those who return as beasts or trees. And last those who sleep.

What little I have learned in the course of a long life, regarding the gods, I have tried to forget.

Could he have murdered a child?
He decided that he could not, but that he could certainly have been accused of having done it and worse. Anyone these days—any man, particularly—could be accused of anything by anyone.

If those who despise us stone us as prophets, they must listen to us as prophets. If they curse us as sorcerers, they must learn to curse from us, as sorcerers. Let us enlighten the young, and let us be condemned for corrupting the young, like Socrates. Let us awaken the old before they sleep forever, though they must read us in secret like the Kabbalah. [...] The difficulties and successes of our books and magazines, and the rejection and misinterpretation of the films made from our ideas—are the flounderings of the human mind upon the Paleozoic shore. We are the sand in its gills; let's not lose our grit.

The same critics who spend hundreds of pages discussing various peculiarities of the author's supposed nature often devote none to that much more significant person, the reader for whom he wrote. [...] It is a failure that disqualifies a great deal of head-scratching and hypothesizing. It amounts to saying that the letter is more important than its recipient, the signal more important than the changing image created from it, the bait more important than the fish.

You're a poet too, aren't you? And a good liar, I bet."
"I was the Autarch of Urth; that required a little lying, if you like. We called it diplomacy.

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.

A trooper fights for honor ... or from loyalty. Or for loot sometimes. But he waits for pay. He will not wait without it, because when there is no fighting there is no honor to win, no flag to die for, no loot to gain.

Do you know the story about the farmer who complained all his life about getting too much rain or too little, about the soil and the winds and so on? [...] The farmer died and went to Mainframe, and was soon called to the magnificent chamber in which Pas holds court. Pas said to him, "I understand you feel that I botched certain aspects of the job when I built the Whorl; and the farmer admitted it was so, saying, "Well, sir, pretty often I thought I could have made it better." To which Pas replied, "Yes, that's what I wanted you to do."

Any representation of a god is ultimately a lie, Silk explained. It may be a convenient lie, and it may even be a reverent one; but it's ultimately false. ... Neither image would be more nearly true than the other, or more true than any other—merely more appropriate.

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

People who wish to be lost always get their way.

The best way to be thought honest is to be honest.

The true dawn of adulthood, of intellectual maturity, if you like, is the realization that adults are all fools.

A hundred wise men have said in various ways that love transcends the power of death, and millions of fools have supposed that they meant nothing by it. At this late hour in my life I have learned what they meant. They meant that love transcends death. They are correct.