235 Quotes by Gene Wolfe

You’re old when your dreams become regrets.

White sparks cascaded onto the trembling wick. It was as if there were shooting stars in his hands, like the stars at the bottom of the grave to which Silk and Hyacinth had driven Orpine’s body in a dream he recalled with uncanny clarity. Here we dig holes in the ground for our dead, he thought, to bring them nearer the Outsider; and on Blue we do the same because we did it here, though it takes them away from him. The.

What went wrong? That is the question, and not “To be or not to be,” for all of Shakespeare.

All this and much else besides, lovely and appalling, blood red and living green, yellow, blue, white, and velvet black, with minglings of other colors and of colors he had never known.

He said I had been touched by a god, and that I am a holy man. I said, “If I have been touched by a god, it was only to curse me.” He nodded. “All who are touched by gods are holy.

You claim the right to prosecute me in accordance with your laws, the laws of Dorp, about which I know nothing. I claim the right to defend myself by the only law I know, the law of reason. Reason demands an impartial judge, and that I be given the advice of someone who knows your law.

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

The instruments you have are the right instruments for you, because you’ve been shaped by them. That’s another law.

My rule is never save bits. They get the way, and you don’t think of anything new. Put ’em in. Make a big mess.