Gene Wolfe Quotes

Now I must, I suppose, explain why I have been writing this account. [...] I have written to disclose myself to myself, and I am writing now because I will, I know, sometime read what I am now writing and wonder. Perhaps by the time I do, I will have solved the mystery of myself, or perhaps I will no longer care to know the solution.

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

It doesn't move because he has fastened it in place until he finds out why it doesn't move.

A child, not knowing what is extraordinary and what is commonplace, usually lights midway between the two, finds interest in incidents adults consider beneath notice, and calmly accepts the most improbable occurrences.

"God is love" "Love is blind" If these be true, then God is blind: Simple logic would appear to have escaped the theologians. Res ipsa loquitur, love is not blind, neither God's love nor man's, though we all wish at times to escape God's eye, and though it must at times appear that the lover cannot see what we see—unless, of course, we are ourselves that lover. Like God, the lover sees but forgives.

There is no human quality more attractive than the courage of the weak.

People who fear death live no longer than those who don't, and live scared.

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.

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

Every theory is true in some discipline. The beauty of this is that it carries its own confirmation.

I have never in my whole life had a fight with a smart person or even seen anybody else have one either. That is because when the fight starts the smart people are not there anymore. They have gone off someplace else, and when it is over they come back and tell you how much they did in the fight, only it is all lies.

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.

People who wish to be lost always get their way.

Prince of parable, I desire to see those gardens of lasting delight which Allah—the Creator! the Ever Beneficent!—reserves for the faithful. How am I to do so if I tell lies?"
"By lying to Allah, I suppose.

He was proud, like all lonely men. Lonely men must be proud or die.