“When a client is driven to the utmost extremity, it is warmth and food and ease from pain he wants. Peace and justice come afterward. Rain symbolizes mercy and sunlight charity, but rain and sunlight are better than mercy and charity. Otherwise they would degrade the things they symbolize.”
― Gene Wolfe, quote from The Citadel of the Autarch
“Sometimes driven aground by the photon storms, by the swirling of the galaxies, clockwise and counterclockwise, ticking with light down the dark sea-corridors lined with our silver sails, our demon-haunted sails, our hundred-league masts as fine as threads, as fine as silver needles sewing the threads of starlight, embroidering the stars on black velvet, wet with the winds of Time that go racing by. The bone in her teeth! The spume, the flying spume of Time, cast up on these beaches where old sailors can no longer keep their bones from the restless, the unwearied universe. Where has she gone? My lady, the mate of my soul? Gone across the running tides of Aquarius, of Pisces, of Aries. Gone. Gone in her little boat, her nipples pressed against the black velvet lid, gone, sailing away forever from the star-washed shores, the dry shoals of the habitable worlds. She is her own ship, she is the figurehead of her own ship, and the captain. Bosun, Bosun, put out the launch! Sailmaker, make a sail! She has left us behind. We have left her behind. She is in the past we never knew and the future we will not see. Put out more sail, Captain for the universe is leaving us behind…”
― Gene Wolfe, quote from The Citadel of the Autarch
“Here is light. You will say that it is not a living entity, but you miss the point that it is more, not less. Without occupying space, it fills the universe. It nourishes everything, yet itself feeds upon destruction. We claim to control it, but does it not perhaps cultivate us as a source of food? May it not be that all wood grows so that it can be set ablaze, and that men and women are born to kindle them?”
― Gene Wolfe, quote from The Citadel of the Autarch
“I have no way of knowing whether you, who eventually will read this record, like stories or not. If you do not, no doubt you have turned these pages without attention. I confess that I love them. Indeed, it often seems to me that of all the good things in the world, the only ones humanity can claim for itself are stories and music; the rest, mercy, beauty, sleep, clean water and hot food (as the Ascian would have said) are all the work of the Increate. Thus, stories are small things indeed in the scheme of the universe, but it is hard not to love best what is our own—hard for me, at least.”
― Gene Wolfe, quote from The Citadel of the Autarch
“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.”
― Gene Wolfe, quote from The Citadel of the Autarch
“You are the advocate of the dead.’ The old man nodded. ‘I am. People talk about being fair to this one and that one, but nobody I ever heard talks about doing right by them. We take everything they had, which is all right. And spit, most often, on their opinions, which I suppose is all right too. But we ought to remember now and then how much of what we have we got from them. I figure while I’m still here I ought to put a word in for them.”
― Gene Wolfe, quote from The Citadel of the Autarch
Gene Wolfe
Born place: in New York, New York, The United States
Born date May 7, 1931
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“But it was like hiding a corpse. I’ve come to the conclusion that nothing in this world can be hidden or suppressed. All such attempts are like holding an umbrella to conceal the sun.”
― R.K. Narayan, quote from The Guide
“It is time for you to choose, the rope or the spike!”
― Damian Wampler, quote from Sevara: Dawn of Hope
“After this interlude we return to the question of the parcel. Yes, says the Postmaster, it has been here – actually here in the office! But it is here no longer. It has been removed to the custody of the Customs. Monsieur B. must realize that parcels are subject to Customs dues. B. says that it is personal wearing apparel. The Postmaster says: ‘No doubt, no doubt; but that is the affair of the Customs.’ ‘We must, then, go to the Customs office?’ ‘That will be the proper procedure,’ agrees the Postmaster. ‘Not that it will be any use going today. Today is Wednesday, and on Wednesdays the Customs are closed.’ ‘Tomorrow, then?’ ‘Yes, tomorrow the Customs will be open.’ ‘Sorry,’ says B. to Max. ‘I suppose it means I shall have to come in again tomorrow to get my parcel.’ The Postmaster says that certainly Monsieur B. will have to come in tomorrow, but that even tomorrow he will not be able to get his parcel. ‘Why not?’ demands B. ‘Because, after the formalities of the Customs have been settled, the parcel must then go through the Post Office.’ ‘You mean, I shall have to come on here?’ ‘Precisely. And that will not be possible tomorrow, for tomorrow the Post Office will be closed,’ says the Postmaster triumphantly. We go into the subject in detail, but officialdom triumphs at every turn. On no day of the week, apparently, are both the Customs and the Post Office open!”
― quote from Come, Tell Me How You Live
“An avalanche starts with one pebble. A forest with one seed. And it takes one word to make the whole world stop and listen. All you need is the right one.”
― Jay Kristoff, quote from Endsinger
“Grace is that in God which brings into favor one justly in disfavor.”
― A.W. Tozer, quote from The Attributes of God: A Journey Into the Father's Heart
Sister Carrie
Seduced in the Dark
Hunger
Lord of Chaos
The Book of Three
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