Quotes from Gene Wolfe

Iknow an old couple who live near Hell.

Who was, who could be, more broken, exiled, and despairing than Maytera Marble?

I decided that the future most in keeping with the dark figure I planned and his journey toward war was what I call the do-nothing future, the one in which humanity clings to its old home, the continents of Earth, and waits for the money to run out.

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? In sleep the mind is encircled by its time, which is why we so often hear the voices of the dead there, and receive intelligence of things to come.

We shut our eyes to the sky and the sea in the seventies—now in the nineties we open doors to a darker, nearer empire than either, the place that is between stones that touch, that has lived for fifty thousand years in the black guts of caves, for six thousand in the empty rooms of old houses; and one of the doors is the door in this wall of bricks.

Solitude has great attractions for the wise.

our sun is long and straight, a line of burning gold fencing our lands from the skylands.

It was in this fashion that I began the long journey by which I have backed into the throne.

All these would be rationalizations—the thing itself was glorious.

Then he was gone, and the girl lay hugging her child, looking through the leaves at the bright band of The Waterfall and the broad seas and scattered storms of sisterworld. Then her eyes closed, and she could pull sisterworld from the tree. She put the blue rind to her lips and tasted sweetness. Then she woke again, the sweet juice still in her mouth. Someone was bending over her, and for a moment she was afraid.

if we went out the way we came in, you'd never find anything. It's too short.

Dorcas belonged, as I now realized, to that vast group of women (which may, indeed, include all women) who betray us—and to that special type who betray us not for some present rival but for their own pasts.

When I think back on it, it was as if I had the Claw already, more than a year before I got it. I can't describe how he looked when he rolled his eye up to see me. He touched my heart. I never revived an animal when I had the Claw, but then I never tried. When I was among them, I was usually wishing I could kill one, because I wanted something to eat. Now I'm no longer sure that killing animals to eat is something we are meant to do.

the kind of place where one finds objects that appear to have come from nowhere …

This world that you and we treasure has now been driven round the sun so often that the warp and woof of its space grow threadbare and fall as dust and feeble lint from the loom of time.

Death is nothing, and for that reason you must fear it.

Surely the Pancreator knows all mysteries. He spoke the long word that is our Universe and few things happen that are not part of that word.

My hunger fed at least as ravenously upon her imperfections.

You must know that for certain simples to attain their highest virtues they must be pulled from grave soil by moonlight.

what a many-sided thing is the telling of any tale.

The Aelf have struggled to free themselves from the monster called Kulili throughout their history. You are their last hope, and their best. I am not letting you out of my sight—no, not for ten thousand puking maidens.

How shall the state be most vigorous? It shall be most vigorous when it is without conflict. How shall it be without conflict? When it is without disagreement. How shall disagreement be banished? By banishing the four causes of disagreement: lies, foolish talk, boastful talk, and talk which serves only to incite quarrels. How shall the four causes be banished? By speaking only Correct Thought.

Thought. Then shall the state be without disagreement. Being without disagreement it shall be without conflict. Being without conflict it shall be vigorous, strong, and secure.

we have each of us in the dustiest cellars of our minds a counter at which we strive to repay the debts of the past with the debased currency of the present.