Gene Wolfe Quotes
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A child, not knowing what is extraordinary and what is commonplace, usually lights midway between the two, finds interest in incidents adults consider beneath notice, and calmly accepts the most improbable occurrences.
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'You’re called a holy man,' she said. 'I see you’re wholly deranged.'
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People who get eyeball arthritis see only what they're supposed to see, like that TV screen.
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It is well not to spend one's symbols improvidently.
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He is indeed a creature of evil; but so are you, and so am I.
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It’s easy-very easy-to slay a ruler. But it’s very difficult to prevent a worse one from coming to his place.
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There is more to be learned from any good teacher than the subject taught.
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It doesn't move because he has fastened it in place until he finds out why it doesn't move.
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Time passed, slipping through the waist of the universe's great hourglass like the eroded soil of this continent slipping down her rivers to the seas.
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When neither our fellows nor our gods spoil our plans, we spoil them ourselves.
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She often spoke of marryin' a butcher or a sausage maker, having a liking for those trades, as she said, for they knew you couldn't never get all the stains from their aprons, and didn't demand it.
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Be careful about extending credit, too, and doubly careful about refusing to extend it.
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Perhaps I need to begin before I can think clearly about the task. The chief thing is to begin, after all-after which the chief thing is to finish.
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Any representation of a god is ultimately a lie, Silk explained. It may be a convenient lie, and it may even be a reverent one; but it's ultimately false. ... Neither image would be more nearly true than the other, or more true than any other-merely more appropriate.
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We don't harm the gods when we mingle their names with our curses and obscenities. We harm ourselves. I said that I didn't regard most gods as holy, but they don't have to be for our malice and mockery to recoil upon ourselves.
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You have a walking stick. Suppose it could walk by itself, and that it chose to walk away from you. ... It would no longer be a walking stick at all, only a stick that walked.