Gene Wolfe quotes - page 4

What I would like to know is what I should be doing." "I see what you mean," Freeling said, "but I'm afraid I can't tell you. If you were a lathe operator I'd say make that part, but you're a part of management, and you can't treat managerial people that way." "Go ahead," Forlesen told him. "I won't mind." [...] "What I meant was that if I knew what you ought to be doing I'd hire a clerk to do it. You're where you are because we feel-rightly or wrongly-that you can find your own work, recognize it when you see it, and do it or get somebody else to. Just make damn sure you don't step on anybody's toes while you're doing it, and don't make more trouble than you fix. [...] Don't come running to me with complaints, and don't let me get any complaints about you. Now what was it you wanted to see me about?" "I don't," Forlesen said. "You said you wanted to see me. (Gene Wolfe)
One of the questions whose answers we seek is why we seek. View quote
Gene Wolfe
You're a poet too, aren't you? And a good liar, I bet.” "I was the Autarch of Urth; that required a little lying, if you like. We called it diplomacy. View quote
Gene Wolfe
The best way to be thought honest is to be honest. View quote
Gene Wolfe
There is more to be learned from any good teacher than the subject taught. View quote
Gene Wolfe
Those who have never fought suppose that the deserter who flies the field is consumed by shame. He is not, or he would not desert; with only trifling exceptions, battles are fought by cowards afraid to run. View quote
Gene Wolfe
When a tree is very old, yet still lives, sometimes the limbs are strangely twisted. View quote
Gene Wolfe
PARADOX: A statement that reduces the matter at hand to complete obscurity while clarifying it. [...] Paradoxes are sensitive and can be routed by sneering. View quote
Gene Wolfe
There are people who love birds so much they free them. There are others who love them so much they cage them. View quote
Gene Wolfe
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. View quote
Gene Wolfe
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)
He is not mad. He is only more clever than you. It is not the same. View quote
Gene Wolfe
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. View quote
Gene Wolfe
It doesn't move because he has fastened it in place until he finds out why it doesn't move. View quote
Gene Wolfe
The jokes of the gods are long in the telling. View quote
Gene Wolfe
An exaggerated and solemn respect always indicates a loss of faith. View quote
Gene Wolfe
Prince of parable, I desire to see those gardens of lasting delight which Allah-the Creator! the Ever Beneficent!-reserves for the faithful. How am I to do so if I tell lies? View quote
Gene Wolfe
My whole life experience feeds into my writing. I think that must be true for every writer. Clearly the Army and combat were major influences; just the same, you need to understand that many of the writers we have now couldn't load a revolver. View quote
Gene Wolfe
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. View quote
Gene Wolfe
We can dive to the bottom of the sea and some say NASA will fly us to the stars, and I have known men to plunge into the past-or the future-and drown. But there's one place where we can't go. We can't go where we are already. We can't go home, because our minds, and our hearts, and our immortal souls are already there. View quote
Gene Wolfe
The only actors who can really do justice to their parts are the ones who don't know what they are. (Gene Wolfe)
In the marketplace he told of honor, and how it is a higher law than any law. At the crossroads he talked of freedom, the freedom of the wind and clouds, and freedom that loves all things and is without guilt. Beside the city gates he told stories of the forgotten cities that were and of the forgotten cities that might be, if only men would forget them. View quote
Gene Wolfe
Now I must, I suppose, explain why I have been writing this account. [...] I have written to disclose myself to myself, and I am writing now because I will, I know, sometime read what I am now writing and wonder. Perhaps by the time I do, I will have solved the mystery of myself, or perhaps I will no longer care to know the solution. View quote
Gene Wolfe
We can only hope.” "That's like the frog said when he seen the stork. View quote
Gene Wolfe
When we're young, we notice things that are young, like ourselves. New grass on old graves. New leaves on old trees. View quote
Gene Wolfe