235 Quotes by Gene Wolfe

In ancient Greece, skeptics were those who thought, not those who scoffed.

Before I had so much as opened any of the other volumes, I felt that pressure of time that is perhaps the surest indication we have left childhood behind.

Why should the Increate protect us from ourselves? We might protect ourselves from ourselves. It may be that he will help us only when we come to regret what we have done.

I don’t think anyone is more intrinsically holy. People experience God in many ways; and it seems to me that God does what the rest of us do: He chooses the means that best gets His message across.

The gem, which he had supposed colorless, caught a ray of sunlight from the god-gate in the roof and flashed a watery green. For some reason, it reminded him of her eyes. He put it to his lips, his thoughts full of things that could never be.

These chaps everyone’s been shouting at to change things, they’re the very chaps that do so well as things are. Think they’re going to make new rules for a game they always win? Not ruddy likely.

He was a rich man – richer, I think, than Mr. Macafee – and like most rich men he had nothing distinctive about him, the money having assumed for him the task of self-expression that, in poorer men, is assumed by the personality;.

If you don’t know I can’t tell you. Yes, I can; because I want to turn things around. Like, everybody all the time only does it for himself or something he sees being part of him only bigger, an empire or a church, like that. I’m doing it for ants, to set us loose.” The bearded man said, “You stoned?” “Sure I’m stoned. Ken, I’m stoned blind.” “You don’t look stoned, man.” “Trust me.

From the top of the ramp he looked back and saw them go, their glasses crashing to the flagstoned paths and brick paved patios, their cigarettes dropping like poisoned fireflies. “I loved you,” the girl said. “Or at least I liked you. You’ll be gone in a moment and I can’t even ask you to kiss me, because I’m going to be sick.” “We’re still here,” John Edward told her, “both of us.” And she was gone.