Quotes from Gene Wolfe

All time exists. That is the truth beyond the legends the epopts tell. 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 us?

I said nothing. It may have been that I was thinking; but if so, my mind was too much filled with sleep to be conscious of its thought. Instead, I became profoundly aware of my physical surroundings. The sky above my face in all its grandeur seemed to have been made solely for my benefit, and to be presented for my inspection now. I lay upon the ground as upon a woman, and the very air that surrounded me seemed a thing as admirable as crystal and as fluid as wine.

he imagined himself a mouse descending a clear stream in half an eggshell, the master of a comet enfolding a hollow world.

He was made all of copper, so he was coppery-red all over, like a new pipe for the bathroom.

his body close to the ground, he turned and

when a gift is deserved, it is not a gift but a payment. The only true gifts are such as you now receive.

A knight is a man who lives honorably and dies honorably, because he cares more for his honor than for his life. If his honor requires him to fight, he fights. He doesn't count his foes or measure their strength, because those things don't matter. They don't affect his decision.

What good is this gift of speech, except that I can curse myself. Good mother of all the beasts, take it from me. I would be as I was, and shout wordless among the hills. Reason shows reason can only bring pain - how wise to forget and be happy again!

We say, I will, and I will not, and imagine ourselves (though we obey the orders of some prosaic person every day) our own masters, when the truth is that our masters are sleeping. One wakes within us and we are ridden like beasts, though the rider is but some hitherto unguessed part of ourselves.

A knight," I told myself, "doesn't bother to count the enemy." Another step, and another. "But I wish I'd found Disiri—that I could see her once more before I go." Ben, I cannot tell you how I knew then that I was going to lose even the memory of her. But I did.

You hated it—hated its nasty ugly ways, its noise and smoke and most of all its shaggy shitty itch for gelt, gelt for this and gelt for that until a man couldn't fart without paying

Each time you gain your hearts desire, your heart shall reach for something higher.

I am to expect no help from him. I AM help.

now we have come, as some poet aptly puts it, to the place where men are pulled apart by their destinations.

You said you loved truth. Now I see why — it is truth that binds men.

My master, the Marquis of Carabas, sends you greetings.

The painting was of that irritating kind which dissolves into mere blobs of color unless it can be seen as a whole. I took a step backward to get a better perspective of it, then another … With the third step, I realized I should have made contact with the wall behind me, and that I had not. I was standing instead inside the picture that had occupied the opposite wall: a dark room of ancient leather chairs and ebony tables.

There was a time when she did not remember my name or that we were married, but she still remembered that she loved me.

But strength still goes out from your thorns, and from your abysses the sound of music. Your shadows lie on my heart like roses and your nights are like strong wine.

With him I hated the Autarchy, though I had no notion of what might replace it. With him I despised the exultants who failed to rise against the Autarch and bound the fairest of their daughters to him in ceremonial concubinage. With him I detested the people for their lack of discipline and a common purpose.

Something like that." "You

all the things people have said were The Secret after they had talked to mystagogues on far worlds or studied the popul vuh of the magicians, or fasted in the trunks of holy trees.

But there is no such reason to mourn the destruction of a colony of cells: such a colony dies each time a loaf of bread goes into the oven. If a man is no more than such a colony, a man is nothing; but we instinctively know that man is more. What happens then to the part that is more?

Undines are the elemental spirits of water, the word undine being derived from unda, wave. Like all elemental spirits, they partake of the character of their element, so undines are beautiful, restless, and suffocating.