235 Quotes by Gene Wolfe

It seems to me that you can almost define civilization by saying it's people who are not willing to hurt other people because the other people are different.

We say that a man is as brave as an atrox, or that a woman is as lovely as a red roe, as [she] was. But we lack any such term for loyalty, because nothing we know is truly loyal---or rather, because true loyalty is found only in the individual and not in the type. A son may be loyal to his father or a dog to its master, but most are not...perhaps we are unable to advance some paragon of loyalty to an apothegm only because loyalty (in the final analysis) is choice.

Time turns our lies into truths.

You never learn how to write a novel. You just learn how to write the novel that you're writing.

There is no magic. There is only knowledge, more or less hidden.

You believe me wise because I taught you once, but I have not been north, as you have. You have seen (what) I have never seen...You flatter me by asking my opinion.

She possessed the hopeful, hopeless courage of the poor, which is perhaps the most appealing of all human qualities

Here I pause. If you wish to walk no farther with me, reader, I do not blame you. It is no easy road.

Time itself is a thing, so it seems to me, that stands solidly like a fence of iron palings with its endless row of years; and we flow past like Gyoll, on our way to a sea from which we shall return only as rain.