Gene Wolfe

"When a tree is very old, yet still lives, sometimes the limbs are strangely twisted."

"No man has a home unless he is master of a place where he must please no one—a place where he can go and lock the door behind him."

"“That the environment should respond to human thought. That is the core of magic and the oldest dream of mankind.”"

"It will help her if she wants to be helped; if she insists on clasping her illness to her it will not."

"Evolution teaches us, Nicholas, that the original purpose of language was to ritualize men’s threats and curses, his spells to compel the gods; communication came later."

"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."

"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." "Oh. Well, I'm through."

"They based their extrapolations on numbers. That worked as long as money, which is easily measured numerically, was the principle motivating force in human affairs. But as time progressed, human actions became responsive instead to a multitude of incommensurable vectors."

"An exaggerated and solemn respect always indicates a loss of faith."

"Time passed, slipping through the waist of the universe's great hourglass like the eroded soil of this continent slipping down her rivers to the seas."

"She often spoke of marryin' a butcher or a sausage maker, having a liking for those trades, as she said, for they knew you couldn't never get all the stains from their aprons, and didn't demand it."

"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."

"The only actors who can really do justice to their parts are the ones who don't know what they are."

"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."

"Nobody bothers crazy people. [...] In the end, maybe it's the crazy people who win after all."

"Very small, child, are the flying days of love, and men and women must catch them when they can, if they are to know love at all."

"He was proud, like all lonely men. Lonely men must be proud or die."

"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?" "By lying to Allah, I suppose."

"People who wish to be lost always get their way."

"A hundred wise men have said in various ways that love transcends the power of death, and millions of fools have supposed that they meant nothing by it. At this late hour in my life I have learned what they meant. They meant that love transcends death. They are correct."

"Legend declares that at the christening of our family’s founder a somewhat deaf fairy who had been asked to render him and his descendants mettlesome, made us meddlesome instead."

"I have never in my whole life had a fight with a smart person or even seen anybody else have one either. That is because when the fight starts the smart people are not there anymore. They have gone off someplace else, and when it is over they come back and tell you how much they did in the fight, only it is all lies."

"Every theory is true in some discipline. The beauty of this is that it carries its own confirmation."

"People who get eyeball arthritis see only what they're supposed to see, like that TV screen."

"Could he have murdered a child? He decided that he could not, but that he could certainly have been accused of having done it and worse. Anyone these days—any man, particularly—could be accused of anything by anyone."

"People who fear death live no longer than those who don't, and live scared."

"There is no human quality more attractive than the courage of the weak."

""God is love" "Love is blind" If these be true, then God is blind: Simple logic would appear to have escaped the theologians. Res ipsa loquitur, love is not blind, neither God's love nor man's, though we all wish at times to escape God's eye, and though it must at times appear that the lover cannot see what we see—unless, of course, we are ourselves that lover. Like God, the lover sees but forgives."

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

"It doesn't move because he has fastened it in place until he finds out why it doesn't move."

"One of the questions whose answers we seek is why we seek."

"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."

"“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.”"

"I was the core of the universe, as we always are to ourselves."

"The most trivial skirmish is not trivial to those who die in it, and so should not be trivial in any ultimate sense to us."

"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."

"“I pledged myself to show you wonders.” I drew her farther from the building. “I’m not ready to see wonders. Yours, or any other woman’s.”"

"“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.”"

"Until we reach the end of time, we don’t know whether something’s been good or bad; we can only judge the intentions of those who acted."

"“You’re called a holy man,” she said. “I see you’re wholly deranged.”"

"It’s easy—very easy—to slay a ruler. But it’s very difficult to prevent a worse one from coming to his place."

"What is perceived is dictated by the instrument. If you had other eyes, or another mind, you would see all things otherwise."

"He is indeed a creature of evil; but so are you, and so am I."

"We never really got married. When we both wanted to we never had the money, somehow. And when we had the money, there was always some kind of quarrel. After a couple of years everybody thought we were married anyway."

"“We can only hope.” “That’s like the frog said when he seen the stork.”"

"Men build scales, but the gods blow upon the lighter pan."

"The gods smile on us, my son, or so it is written. It's a wonder they don't laugh aloud."

"You have need of learning, children, in order that the whorl will someday have need of you."

"Any representation of a god is ultimately a lie, Silk explained. It may be a convenient lie, and it may even be a reverent one; but it's ultimately false. ... Neither image would be more nearly true than the other, or more true than any other—merely more appropriate."

"The best way to be thought honest is to be honest."