235 Quotes by Gene Wolfe

But love is the last need a group has, not the first. If it were the first, there could be no such groups. Justice is the first need, the mortar that binds together a village or a town, or even a city. Or the crew of a boat. No one would take part in any such thing if he did not believe that he would be treated fairly.

Year followed struggling year for me, and all that time I read – I suppose few have ever read so. I began, as most young people do, by reading the books I enjoyed. But I found that narrowed my pleasure...

We would be blind, Auk. As blind as I. Because I have never had eyes of my own, I could not look out through yours. But I shall go with you, and guide you, and use your body to heal you, if I can. Look upon me, Auk.” “There’s nothing to see,” Auk protested. But there was: a stammering light so filled with hope and pleasure and wonder that Auk would willingly have seen nothing else, if only he could have watched it forever.

I was miserable before I knew I was no longer happy.

We have books whose papers are matted of plants from which spring curious alkaloids, so that the reader, in turning their pages, is taken unaware by bizarre fantasies and chimeric dreams.

That was a fine story,” I told her, “one of the best that I’ve ever heard.” “I had to live it,” she replied, “and it is far better to hear such stories than to live them, I promise you, though it ended so happily.

Among you Medes, I’m told, there are many men so honorable that everyone trusts them. We’re not like that at all – we never trust one another. So what we do instead is make sure that each side’s represented, so that every rascal’s got two worse looking over his shoulder.

I take his gold. I’m hated for that by men who would grovel for it, were it offered to them.” Myt-ser.

Nations are like men – growing old, never young. My son had the misfortune to be a young man of an old nation.