Quotes from Gene Wolfe

I am not a talking vegetable, as you should be able to see. Even if a planet were to follow the one evolutionary way, out of some many millions, that leads to intelligence, it is impossible that it should duplicate in wood and leaf the form of a human being. The same thing might be said of stones, yet there are statues.

Work in the kitchen of the inn had provided her with many opportunities to snatch a mouthful of pastry or a choice potato dumpling or a half stein of dark beer, and she had availed herself of most of them—with the result that she possessed a lush and blooming figure of the sort that appeals to men like Lame Hans

We say that a man is as brave as an atrox, or that a woman is as lovely as a red roe, as [she] was. But we lack any such term for loyalty, because nothing we know is truly loyal---or rather, because true loyalty is found only in the individual and not in the type. A son may be loyal to his father or a dog to its master, but most are not...perhaps we are unable to advance some paragon of loyalty to an apothegm only because loyalty (in the final analysis) is choice.

A bowshot down the slope of winter-brown grass and broken snow, beyond the dead campfires and the sleepers cocooned in whatever covering they had been able to find, green-robed spruce and white-limbed birch stirred in a dawn wind that repeated - once only - the blessing she had received.

pain … the chain forged to bind us to the eternal present, …

I drive away those who pay to see me by foretelling their futures, and I will foretell yours. You are young now, and strong. But before the world has wound itself ten times more about the sun you shall be less strong, and you shall never regain the strength that is yours now. If you breed sons, you will engender enemies against yourself. If-- Enough! I said. What you are telling me is only the fortune of all men.

A child, not knowing what is extraordinary and what commonplace, usually lights midway between the two, finds interest in incidents adults consider beneath notice, and calmly accepts the most improbable occurrences.

We meet and love, someone builds a tomb for us, perhaps. It does not matter—someone else will rob it, and the winds puff away our dust; then we shall be forgotten.

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.

Where there is no repentance, forgiveness is only permission by another name. I

By slow degrees, a feeling of disquiet seized me. I was miserable before I knew I was no longer happy, and bowed with responsibility when I did not yet fully understand I held it.

You know what the biologists say: Man has reached the stage where he evolves through his machines.

You are the advocate of the dead.' The old man nodded. 'I am. People talk about being fair to this one and that one, but nobody I ever heard talks about doing right by them. We take everything they had, which is all right. And spit, most often, on their opinions, which I suppose is all right too. But we ought to remember now and then how much of what we have we got from them. I figure while I'm still here I ought to put a word in for them.

Some are haunted by ghosts. I am haunted by stories.

The second came not as they are ordinarily born—that is, head foremost as a man climbs from a lower place into a high—but feet foremost as a man lets himself down into a lower place. His grandmother was holding his brother, not knowing that two were to be born, and for that reason his feet beat the ground for a time with no one to draw him forth. Because of this his mother called him John Sandwalker.

It was earliest morning, when even small trees cast long shadows and scarlet foxes trot denward through the dew like flecks of fire.

By the same argument, the life must reside in each joint of every finger, and surely that is impossible. How big is a man's life? asked Ultan. I have no way of knowing, but isn't it larger than that? You see it from the beginning, and anticipate much. I, recollecting it from its termination, know how little there has been.

Someone who holds in confidence only those secrets he has been told not to reveal can never be trusted.

If a beast has but one cry, the cry tells nothing; and even the wind has a multitude of voices, so that those who sit indoors may hear it and know if the weather is tumultuous or mild.

The heart remembers even when no trace of face or voice remains.

There is more to be learned from any good teacher than the subject taught.

You must never let yourself be turned aside from life's serious and important questions by ridicule.

I clasped my heart's companion to me, and felt myself clasped. I felt myself clasped, and clasped my heart's companion to me.

At that, the angel tore open his breast, and displaying all the qualities therein to the assembled poultry, took out his ability to alter his shape. He handed it to the fattest goose to hold for the duration of the match, and the goose at once transformed himself, becoming a gray salt goose, such as stream from pole to pole. But he did not fly off, and he kept the angel's ability safe.