Gene Wolfe
Gene Wolfe
Gene Rodman Wolfeis an American science fiction and fantasy writer. He is noted for his dense, allusive prose as well as the strong influence of his Catholic faith. He is a prolific short-story writer and novelist and has won many science fiction and fantasy literary awards...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth7 May 1931
CountryUnited States of America
eternal golden greek laid myth period thinking wondering
I started thinking about knighthood, and wondering why that period has an eternal fascination for us. Greek myth is laid in the Golden Age.
time past journey
All time exists. That is the truth.... 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?
winning situation oneself
...in some situations winning consist[s] of disentangling oneself.
honest fantasy novel
All novels are fantasies. Some are more honest about it.
moving men thinking
We think that we know a man or a woman, when so much of what we know is actually that man's or that woman's situation, his or her place on the board of life. Move the pawn to the last row and see her rise in armor, sword in hand.
spring women believe
Women believe -- or at least often pretend to believe -- that all our tenderness for them springs from desire; that we love them when we have not for a time enjoyed them, and dismiss them when we are sated, or to express it more precisely, exhausted. There is no truth in this idea, though it may be made to appear true. When we are rigid with desire, we are apt to pretend a great tenderness in the hope of satisfying that desire; but at no other time are we in fact so liable to treat women brutally, and so unlikely to feel any deep emotion but one.
pain rain justice
When a client is driven to the utmost extremity, it is warmth and food and ease from pain he wants. Peace and justice come afterward. Rain symbolizes mercy and sunlight charity, but rain and sunlight are better than mercy and charity. Otherwise they would degrade the things they symbolize.
magic
There is no magic. There is only knowledge, more or less hidden.
strong real believe
Weak people believe what is forced on them. Strong people what they wish to believe, forcing that to be real.
song stars uncles
You must know the story of how the race of ancient days reached the stars, and how they bargained away all the wild half of themselves to do so, so that they no longer cared for the taste of the pale wind, no for love or lust, nor to make new songs nor to sing old ones, nor for any of the other animal things they believed they had brought with them out of the rain forests al the bottom of time--though in fact, so my uncle told me, those things brought them
feel-better things-in-life knowing
That was when I found out that the best way in the world to make yourself feel better when you have hit bottom is to try to get somebody else to feel better. There are certain things in life that are truly worth knowing, and that is one of the big ones.
unforgivable-sin remains capable
That we are capable only of being what we are remains our unforgivable sin.
treatment disturbed persons
We have treatments for disturbed persons, Nicholas. But, at least for the time being, we have no treatment for disturbing persons.
school voice house
A youthful American voice isn't particularly challenging - I've been a young American, and they're all around me. I can walk from my house to Barrington High School.