Gene Wolfe: Trending quotes

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Gene Wolfe: 204 quotes4 likes

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

Gene Wolfe book The Death of Dr. Island

"The Death of Doctor Island", Universe 3 (1973), ed. Terry Carr, The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories (1980). Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, The Wolfe Archipelago (1983), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, The Best of Gene Wolfe (2009)
Fiction

“Experience is a wonderful teacher, but one whose lessons come too late.”

Gene Wolfe

Volume 2: In Green's Jungles (2000), Ch. 1
Fiction, The Book of the Short Sun (1999–2001)

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

Gene Wolfe book Starwater Strains

"Hunter Lake", The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October/November 2003, Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Starwater Strains (2005)
Fiction

“Animals in zoos (we are told) believe that their bars protect them. We Americans have forged our own bars, built our own cage, and live in it more or less content as long as someone feeds us.”

Gene Wolfe

The Best of Gene Wolfe (2009), afterword to "Petting Zoo", p. 432
Nonfiction

“Every so often I get optimistic and explain the best method of learning to write for students. I don't believe any of them has ever tried it.”

Gene Wolfe

The Best of Gene Wolfe (2009), afterword to "The Boy Who Hooked the Sun", p. 381
Nonfiction

“Everyone who is grieved at anything, or discontented, is like a pig for sacrifice, kicking and squealing. Like a dove for sacrifice is he who laments in silence. Our one distinction is that it is given to us to consent, if we will, to the necessity imposed upon us.”

Gene Wolfe

Volume 2, Ch. 2
Fiction, The Book of the Long Sun (1993–1996)

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

Gene Wolfe

Volume 4, Ch. 10
Fiction, The Book of the Long Sun (1993–1996)

“My definition of a great story has nothing to do with "a varied and interesting background." It is: One that can be read with pleasure by a cultivated reader and reread with increasing pleasure. The business about a varied and interesting background belongs to my definition of a good story.”

Gene Wolfe

"From a Chain letter to George R. R. Martin and Greg Benford", 10 July 1982; as published in Castle of Days (1992)
Nonfiction

“"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.”

Gene Wolfe book Home Fires

Home Fires (2011), Reflection 2
Fiction

“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.”

Gene Wolfe book Gene Wolfe's Book of Days

"Forlesen", Orbit 14 (1974), ed. Damon Knight, Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Gene Wolfe's Book of Days (1981), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Castle of Days (1992), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, The Best of Gene Wolfe (2009)
Fiction

“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.”

Gene Wolfe

"The Right of Things to Come", presentation for the Science Fiction Research Association (1978), as published in Castle of Days (1992)
Nonfiction

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

Gene Wolfe

Fiction, "The Fifth Head of Cerberus", Orbit 10 (1972)

“Time passed, slipping through the waist of the universe's great hourglass like the eroded soil of this continent slipping down her rivers to the seas.”

Gene Wolfe book The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories

"Seven American Nights", Orbit 20 (1978), ed. Damon Knight, Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories (1980), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, The Best of Gene Wolfe (2009)
Fiction

“The gods smile on us, my son, or so it is written. It's a wonder they don't laugh aloud.”

Gene Wolfe

Volume 1, Ch. 2
Fiction, The Book of the Long Sun (1993–1996)

““I pledged myself to show you wonders.”
I drew her farther from the building. “I’m not ready to see wonders. Yours, or any other woman’s.””

Gene Wolfe

Source: Fiction, The Book of the New Sun (1980–1983), The Urth of the New Sun (1987), Chapter 19, "Silence" (p. 132)

“Action, you see, is the end that thought achieves. Action is its only purpose. What else is it good for? If we don't act, it's worthless.”

Gene Wolfe

Volume 2, Ch. 1
Fiction, The Book of the Long Sun (1993–1996)

“The jokes of the gods are long in the telling.”

Gene Wolfe

Volume 3, Ch. 1
Fiction, The Book of the Long Sun (1993–1996)

“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.”

Gene Wolfe

Volume 2, Ch. 23
Fiction, The Book of the Short Sun (1999–2001)

“An exaggerated and solemn respect always indicates a loss of faith.”

Gene Wolfe book The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories

"Seven American Nights", Orbit 20 (1978), ed. Damon Knight, Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories (1980), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, The Best of Gene Wolfe (2009)
Fiction

“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.”

Gene Wolfe

"Bed and Breakfast", Dante's Disciples (1995), ed. Edward E. Kramer, Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Strange Travelers (2000), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, The Best of Gene Wolfe (2009)
Fiction