235 Quotes by Gene Wolfe

But I was awake, sitting by the window looking down at the trailer and Mr. Zoltan's truck. I could not sleep. That is how it is with folks my age. We take naps during the day, and then we cannot sleep at night. I think that it is because God is getting us ready for the grave. Is that right? Did He ever tell you? ("The Little Stranger")

We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard defining edges.

What a man knows hardly matters. It is what he does.

The would-be sorcerer alone has faith in the efficacy of pure knowledge; rational people know that things act of themselves or not at all.

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

My definition of good literature is that which can be read by an educated reader, and reread with increased pleasure.

I have sometimes thought that the reason the trees are so quiet in the summer is that they are in a sort of ecstasy; it is in winter, when the biologists tell us they sleep, that they are most awake, because the sun is gone and they are addicts without their drug, sleeping restlessly and often waking, walking the dark corridors of forests searching for the sun.

The hope in her voice now made me think of a flower growing in shadow.

That we are capable only of being what we are remains our unforgivable sin.