Quotes from Gene Wolfe

I don't think he hates in the way we understand it," Dorcas replied softly. "Or for that matter, that he loves. He wants to manipulate everything he comes upon, to change it with his will. And since tearing down is easier than building, that's what he does most often.

I had survived, and I should be dead. I was haunted by my own life.

We have books here bound in the hides of echidnes, krakens, and beasts so long extinct that those whose studies they are, are for the most part of the opinion that no trace of them survives unfossilized.

The plain shiprock walls, and the painted statue of Lord Pas (from which the paint was peeling) will remain with me until the day I die, always somewhat colored by the wonder I felt as a small boy at seeing a black cock struggling in the old man's hands after he had cut its throat, its wings beating frantically, beating as if they might live after all, live somehow somewhere, if only they could spray the whole place with blood before they

Magic," Martha whispered breathlessly, "is diplomacy. It isn't just saying the words. It's who says them, how he says them, and when he says them.

The young king, bright with such gold as is not found in any mine, strode across the waves; and the glory of him was such that he who looked on it should never look upon another.

I said he had called them because it was from his mind that we drew them, seeking those who hated him, or at least had reason to. The giant you saw might have mastered the Commonwealth, had Severian not defeated him. The blond woman could not forgive him for bringing her back from death.

Seawrack is singing in the place that lies beyond this place. Listen there, and you cannot help but hear her." With her I sang a few more words in the language of those whom Mora had once called the People of That Town. "'In our small house with shining windows, I waited till the tide brought your wreck through. Lie here beside me in the darkness. I'll wake to life the corpse I say is

Urban Trelawny is a bony man of fifty and more, with side whiskers. His eyes say quite plainly that he once trusted someone, that he has been repenting it for longer than you or I have been alive, and that he will never take the chance again.

Seawrack is singing in the place that lies beyond this place. Listen there, and you cannot help but hear her." With her I sang a few more words in the language of those whom Mora had once called the People of That Town. "'In our small house with shining windows, I waited till the tide brought your wreck through. Lie here beside me in the darkness. I'll wake to life the corpse I say is you.

Weak people believe what is forced on them. Strong people what they wish to believe, forcing that to be real. What is the Autarch but a man who believes himself Autarch and makes others believe by the strength of it?

For after all, if the lives of most men are examined in detail, it will be found that they have been experts of immense stature in some unremunerated field, the strategy and theory of some sport or the practice of some craft, have had an exhaustive knowledge of old circus posters or eighteenth-century inn signs or the mathematics of comets; and nothing so distinguished Professor Peacock from the ruck of men as his air of amateurishness.

There comes a time when a sorcerer must triumph on his own or die.

It was in this instant of confusion that I realized for the first time that I am in some degree insane.

I have a bird. Inside." She patted the flat stomach below her small breasts, and for a moment Nicholas thought she had really found food. "She sits in here. She has tangled a nest in my entrails, where she sits and tears at my breath with her beak. I look healthy to you, don't I? But inside I'm hollow and rotten and turning brown, dirt and old feathers, oozing away. Her beak will break through soon.

And with them ten thousand men and women; those who, in seeking a private resurrection, had rendered their corpses forever imperishable lay here like drunkards after their debauch, their crystal sarcophagi broken, their limbs relaxed in grotesque disarray, their clothing rotted or rotting, and their eyes blindly fixed upon the sky.

The would-be sorcerer alone has faith in the efficacy of pure knowledge; rational people know that things act of themselves or not at all.

Spring surprised me, as she always does those of us who remain most of our lives indoors

that's something I didn't understand until recently: you don't get that degree; it gets you.

In the old times, the lords of this world feared no one but their own people, and to defend themselves against them built a great fortress on a hilltop to the north of the city...Many of the people were angry at the building of that citadel, holding it to be their right to slay their lords without hindrance if they so desired.

Cuando los regalos se merecen, son un pago, no un regalo

You have bettered yourself, he said, making such a low bow that the tassel of his cap swept the carpet. You may recall I invariably affirmed you would. Honesty, integrity, and intelligence cannot be kept down. We both know that nothing is easier to keep down, I said. By my old guild, they were kept down every day.

Rising inexorably while we remained unaware of their motion, the mountain peaks to the west were already clawing for the lower edge of the sun;

People don't want other people to be people. They throw names over them and lock them in, but I don't want you to let them lock you in.