Gene Wolfe quotes - page 2

Any representation of a god is ultimately a lie, Silk explained. It may be a convenient lie, and it may even be a reverent one; but it's ultimately false. ... Neither image would be more nearly true than the other, or more true than any other-merely more appropriate. (Gene Wolfe)
Every theory is true in some discipline. The beauty of this is that it carries its own confirmation. View quote
Gene Wolfe
I have called these animals destriers, borrowing an old word for war-horses. I've given them clawed feet instead of hoofs because I think the genetic engineers will give them claws too. The horse's hoofs seem to be an evolutionary mistake. To speak in Lamarckian terms, the horse has lengthened its legs by standing on its toes until it has ended up standing on one toenail. [...] Cheetahs, wolves, and greyhounds all have nonretractile claws that serve them as their spikes serve runners and baseball players. Racehorses could not run as fast as they do if they did not wear aluminum or magnesium shoes. View quote
Gene Wolfe
We may be damned at last, by God or our consciences; and though I've met a good many people who profess to credit no God, I've never met one who believed he had no conscience-this though he could no more produce it for my inspection than I could point out the God he demanded to see. View quote
Gene Wolfe
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. View quote
Gene Wolfe
She often spoke of marryin' a butcher or a sausage maker, having a liking for those trades, as she said, for they knew you couldn't never get all the stains from their aprons, and didn't demand it. View quote
Gene Wolfe
People who get eyeball arthritis see only what they're supposed to see, like that TV screen. View quote
Gene Wolfe
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. View quote
Gene Wolfe
"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. View quote
Gene Wolfe
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. View quote
Gene Wolfe
The gods smile on us, my son, or so it is written. It's a wonder they don't laugh aloud. (Gene Wolfe)
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. View quote
Gene Wolfe
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. View quote
Gene Wolfe
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. View quote
Gene Wolfe
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. View quote
Gene Wolfe
What a man knows hardly matters. It is what he does. View quote
Gene Wolfe
God is the nest we build together. View quote
Gene Wolfe
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. View quote
Gene Wolfe
Knowledge is soon changed, then lost in the mist, an echo half-heard. View quote
Gene Wolfe
Ambiguity is necessary in some of my stories, not in all. In those, it certainly contributes to the richness of the story. I doubt that thematic closure is never attainable. View quote
Gene Wolfe
Year followed struggling year for me, and all that time I read - I suppose few have ever read so. I began, as most young people do, by reading the books I enjoyed. But I found that narrowed my pleasure. (Gene Wolfe)
It will come as no surprise to those of you in the book trade when I say that although books do not cause cancer, books in general do not sell as well as cigarettes. View quote
Gene Wolfe
Does anyone know an effective way of keeping rabbits out of a garden that does not involve building a fence? I have tried that already, but the rabbit will not sit still long enough for me to get the fence all the way around him. View quote
Gene Wolfe
Yours is a race of pawns,” Tzadkiel told me. "You move forward only, unless we move you back to begin the game again. But not all the pieces on the board are pawns. View quote
Gene Wolfe
People who fear death live no longer than those who don't, and live scared. View quote
Gene Wolfe