I was the core of the universe, as we always are to ourselves. - Gene Wolfe

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.

The jokes of the gods are long in the telling.

Evolution teaches us, Nicholas, that the original purpose of language was to ritualize men’s threats and curses, his spells to compel the gods; communication came later.