“Imagine a man who stands before a mirror; a stone strikes it, and it falls to ruin all in an instant. And the man learns that he is himself, and not the mirrored man he had believed himself to be.”
― Gene Wolfe, quote from The Urth of the New Sun
“I waded out of the sea while loving it still, even as I had earlier dropped from the stars while loving them; and in truth there is no place in Briah that is not lovely when it no longer holds the threat of death, save for the places men have made so.”
― Gene Wolfe, quote from The Urth of the New Sun
“If you know anything of science, madame, you must know that water is but ice given energy.”
― Gene Wolfe, quote from The Urth of the New Sun
“You can’t order the waves to be silent, madame,” Baldanders told her. “They are coming, and they are bitter with salt.”
― Gene Wolfe, quote from The Urth of the New Sun
“The instruments you have are the right instruments for you, because you’ve been shaped by them. That’s another law.”
― Gene Wolfe, quote from The Urth of the New Sun
“And then I saw it—not below, where I had looked, but over my head, a vast and noble curve stretching away to either side, with white cloud flying between ourselves and it, a world all speckled over with blue and green like the egg of a wild bird.”
― Gene Wolfe, quote from The Urth of the New Sun
“For years I had known joy in nothing but victories, and now I felt myself a boy again. When I had wished to climb the Great Keep, it had never occurred to me that the Great Keep itself might wish to climb the sky; I knew better now. But this ship at least was climbing beyond the sky, and I wanted to climb with her.”
― Gene Wolfe, quote from The Urth of the New Sun
“Things opposite unite and appear to disappear. The potential for both remains. That is one of the greatest principles of the causes of things.”
― Gene Wolfe, quote from The Urth of the New Sun
“How is it you speak? What sound is there here?” “You must listen to my voice,” she told me, “and not to my words. What do you hear?” I did as she had instructed me, and heard the silken sliding of the sheet, the whisper of our bodies, the breaking of the little waves, and the beating of my own heart. A hundred questions I had been ready to ask, and it had seemed to me that each of the hundred might bring the New Sun. Her lips brushed mine, and every question vanished, banished from my consciousness as if it had never been. Her hands, her lips, her eyes, the breasts I pressed—all wondrous; but there was more, perhaps the perfume of her hair. I felt that I breathed an endless night … . Lying upon my back, I entered Yesod. Or say, rather, Yesod closed about me. It was only then that I knew I had never been there. Stars in their billions spurted from me, fountains of suns, so that for an instant I felt I knew how universes are born. All folly. Reality displaced it, the kindling of the torch that whips shadows to their corners, and with them all the winged fays of fancy. There was something born between Yesod and Briah when I met with Apheta upon that divan in that circling room, something tiny yet immense that burned like a coal conveyed to the tongue by tongs. That something was myself.”
― Gene Wolfe, quote from The Urth of the New Sun
“The best offense is a good defense, but a bad defense is offensive.”
― Gene Wolfe, quote from The Urth of the New Sun
“Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night, Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to. Flight.”
― Gene Wolfe, quote from The Urth of the New Sun
“The young king, bright with such gold as is not found in any mine, strode across the waves; and the glory of him was such that he who looked on it should never look upon another.”
― Gene Wolfe, quote from The Urth of the New Sun
“I said he had called them because it was from his mind that we drew them, seeking those who hated him, or at least had reason to. The giant you saw might have mastered the Commonwealth, had Severian not defeated him. The blond woman could not forgive him for bringing her back from death.”
― Gene Wolfe, quote from The Urth of the New Sun
“Catch Catodon … cast out his conation.”
― Gene Wolfe, quote from The Urth of the New Sun
Gene Wolfe
Born place: in New York, New York, The United States
Born date May 7, 1931
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“Go see old virgins! Now ask a strange boy out, you shy, Retarded thing!”
― Maureen Johnson, quote from 13 Little Blue Envelopes
“You did something because it had always been done, and the explanation was, ‘But we’ve always done it this way.’ A million dead people can’t have been wrong, can they?”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from The Fifth Elephant
“You’re absolutely right. Our little town is a hole. It always has been and still is. But now it is a hole into the future. We’re going to dump so much through this hole into your lousy world that everything will change in it. Life will be different. It’ll be fair. Everyone will have everything that he needs. Some hole, huh? Knowledge comes through this hole. And when we have the knowledge, we’ll make everyone rich, and we’ll fly to the stars, and go anywhere we want. That’s the kind of hole we have here”
― Arkady Strugatsky, quote from Roadside Picnic
“In for a sheep, in for a gargant.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from Furies of Calderon
“He felt something on his neck. Warmth.
He hesitated, then turned weary eyes toward the sky. Sunlight bathed his face. He gaped; it seemed so long since he’d seen pure sunlight. It shone down through a large break in the clouds, comforting, like the warmth of an oven baking a loaf of Adrinne’s thick sourdough bread.
Almen stood, raising a hand to shade his eyes. He took a deep, long breath, and smelled… apple blossoms? He spun with a start.
The apple trees were flowering.
That was plain ridiculous. He rubbed his eyes, but that didn’t dispel the image. They were blooming, all of them, white flowers breaking out between the leaves.
[...] What was happening? Apple trees didn’t blossom twice. Was he going mad?
Footsteps sounded softly on the path that ran past the orchard. Almen spun to find a tall young man walking down out of the foothills. He had deep red hair and he wore ragged clothing: a brown cloak with loose sleeves and a simple white linen shirt beneath. The trousers were finer, black with a delicate embroidery of gold at the cuff.
“Ho, stranger,” Almen said, raising a hand, not knowing what else to say, not even sure if he’d seen what he thought he’d seen. “Did you… did you get lost up in the foothills?”
The man stopped, turning sharply. He seemed surprised to find Almen there. With a start, Almen realized the man’s left arm ended in a stump.
The stranger looked about, then breathed in deeply. “No. I’m not lost. Finally. It feels like a great long time since I’ve understood the path before me.”
― Robert Jordan, quote from Towers of Midnight
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