Gene Wolfe Quotes

Quotes about:

Authority Children Past Pleasure Writing

You never learn how to write a novel. You just learn how to write the novel that you're writing.

Gene Wolfe

Writing, Novel

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Imagine a man who stands before a mirror; a stone strikes it, and it falls to ruin all in an instant. And the man learns that he is himself, and not the mirrored man he had believed himself to be.

Gene Wolfe

Fall, Men, Mirrors

Gene Wolfe (1997). “The Urth of the New Sun: The sequel to 'The Book of the New Sun'”, p.225, Macmillan

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There is no limit to stupidity. - Space itself is said to be bounded by its own curvature, but stupidity continues beyond infinity.

Gene Wolfe

Ignorance, Space, Stupidity

Gene Wolfe (1994). “Sword & Citadel: The Second Half of 'The Book of the New Sun'”, p.327, Macmillan

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Certain mystes aver that the real world has been constructed by the human mind, since our ways are governed by the artificial categories into which we place essentially undifferentiated things, things weaker than our words for them. We believe we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges.

Gene Wolfe

Real, Believe, Mind

"The Shadow of the Torturer". Book by Gene Wolfe, 1980.

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Before you ask more questions, think about whether you really want to know the answers.

Gene Wolfe

Thinking, Answers, Want

Gene Wolfe (1994). “Shadow & Claw: The First Half of 'The Book of the New Sun'”, p.259, Macmillan

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Weak people believe what is forced on them. Strong people what they wish to believe, forcing that to be real.

Gene Wolfe

Strong, Real, Believe

Gene Wolfe (1994). “Shadow & Claw: The First Half of 'The Book of the New Sun'”, p.66, Macmillan

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So powerful is the charm of words, which for us reduces to manageable entities all the passions that would otherwise madden and destroy us.

Gene Wolfe

Powerful, Passion, Charm

Gene Wolfe (1994). “Shadow & Claw: The First Half of 'The Book of the New Sun'”, p.151, Macmillan

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People don't want other people to be people.

Gene Wolfe

People, Getting High, Want

"The Claw of the Conciliator". Book by Don Maitz and Gene Wolfe, March, 1981.

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When a client is driven to the utmost extremity, it is warmth and food and ease from pain he wants. Peace and justice come afterward. Rain symbolizes mercy and sunlight charity, but rain and sunlight are better than mercy and charity. Otherwise they would degrade the things they symbolize.

Gene Wolfe

Pain, Rain, Justice

Gene Wolfe (2011). “The Citadel of the Autarch: Urth: Book of the New Sun”, p.119, Hachette UK

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What a man knows hardly matters. It is what he does.

Gene Wolfe

Men, Doe, Matter

Gene Wolfe (2007). “The Wizard: Book Two of The Wizard Knight”, p.387, Macmillan

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We think that we know a man or a woman, when so much of what we know is actually that man's or that woman's situation, his or her place on the board of life. Move the pawn to the last row and see her rise in armor, sword in hand.

Gene Wolfe

Moving, Men, Thinking

Gene Wolfe (2011). “Home Fires”, p.137, Macmillan

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All time exists. That is the truth.... If the future did not exist now, how could we journey toward it? If the past does not exist still, how could we leave it behind?

Gene Wolfe

Time, Past, Journey

Gene Wolfe (1982). “The claw of the conciliator”, Pocket

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We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges.

Gene Wolfe

Believe, Defining, Truth Is

Gene Wolfe (1994). “Shadow & Claw: The First Half of 'The Book of the New Sun'”, p.14, Macmillan

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When a gift is deserved, it is not a gift but a payment.

Gene Wolfe

Payment

Gene Wolfe (1994). “Shadow & Claw: The First Half of 'The Book of the New Sun'”, p.90, Macmillan

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All novels are fantasies. Some are more honest about it.

Gene Wolfe

Honest, Fantasy, Novel

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No intellect is needed to see those figures who wait beyond the void of death - every child is aware of them, blazing with glories dark or bright, wrapped in authority older than the universe. They are the stuff of our earliest dreams, as of our dying visions. Rightly we feel our lives guided by them, and rightly too we feel how little we matter to them, the builders of the unimaginable, the fighters of wars beyond the totality of existence.

Gene Wolfe

Dream, Children, War

Gene Wolfe (1994). “Shadow & Claw: The First Half of 'The Book of the New Sun'”, p.110, Orb Books

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Woody Allen once said: "You know there must be intelligent life in space. The question is do they have good Chinese restaurants and do they deliver?" Which is really a joke, but it is also a very profound remark. When you say do they have good Chinese restaurants, what you're really saying is, "How much are they like us?" And when you say, "Do they deliver?" you're saying, "Can they get here?" Both of which are profound questions. And at the present, we have no answers.

Gene Wolfe

Intelligent, Space, Profound

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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

Life, Wise, Men

Gene Wolfe (2009). “The Best of Gene Wolfe: A Definitive Retrospective of His Finest Short Fiction”, p.338, Macmillan

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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

Communication, Men, Purpose

Gene Wolfe (2009). “The Best of Gene Wolfe: A Definitive Retrospective of His Finest Short Fiction”, p.111, Macmillan

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Religion and science have always been matters of faith in something. It is the same something.

Gene Wolfe

Matter, Science And Religion

Gene Wolfe (1994). “Sword & Citadel: The Second Half of 'The Book of the New Sun'”, p.288, Macmillan

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My definition of good literature is that which can be read by an educated reader, and reread with increased pleasure.

Gene Wolfe

Literature, Definitions, Pleasure

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He's not rewarding us by talking to us. He's talking to us because He has something to say to us directly, as opposed to the things He says to all humanity.

Gene Wolfe

Talking, Humanity

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God is the nest we build together.

Gene Wolfe

Together, Nests

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You're a materialist, like all ignorant people. But your materialism doesn't make materialism true. Don't you know that? In the final summing up, it is spirit and dream, thought and love and act that matter.

Gene Wolfe

Dream, People, Ignorant

Gene Wolfe (2011). “The Citadel of the Autarch: Urth: Book of the New Sun”, p.40, Hachette UK

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You must know the story of how the race of ancient days reached the stars, and how they bargained away all the wild half of themselves to do so, so that they no longer cared for the taste of the pale wind, no for love or lust, nor to make new songs nor to sing old ones, nor for any of the other animal things they believed they had brought with them out of the rain forests al the bottom of time--though in fact, so my uncle told me, those things brought them

Gene Wolfe

Song, Stars, Uncles

Gene Wolfe (1994). “Sword & Citadel: The Second Half of 'The Book of the New Sun'”, p.38, Orb Books

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Born: May 7, 1931
Occupation: Writer
Cite this Page: Citation

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