“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.”
Guest of Honor speech at Aussiecon Two (August 1985), as published in Castle of Days (1992)
Nonfiction
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Gene Wolfe 102
American science fiction and fantasy writer 1931–2019Related quotes

“Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own.”
"The Sick Chamber," The New Monthly Magazine (August 1830), reprinted in Essays of William Hazlitt, selected and edited by Frank Carr (London, 1889)
Source: Essays of William Hazlitt: Selected and Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by Frank Carr

Inauguration of Library of Birmingham, Jan 2013

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Introduction to Treasury of the Free World (1946)

“Let evil swiftly befall those who have wrongly condemned us - God will avenge us.”
Before he died it is said that he cursed both King Phillip and Pope Clement V, summoning them before God, the Supreme Judge, before the year was over.

Letter to Sisters at Saint Mary's, 1848.

Life and Destiny (1913)