82 quotes
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.
The best way to be thought honest is to be honest.
The Book of the Long Sun (1993)
The jokes of the gods are long in the telling.
The Book of the Long Sun (1993)
What little I have learned in the course of a long life, regarding the gods, I have tried to forget.
The Book of the Long Sun (1993)
It will help her if she wants to be helped; if she insists on clasping her illness to her it will not.
The true dawn of adulthood, of intellectual maturity, if you like, is the realization that adults are all fools.
When a tree is very old, yet still lives, sometimes the limbs are strangely twisted.
The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories (1970)
“We can only hope.”
“That’s like the frog said when he seen the stork.”
The Book of the New Sun (1980)
I was the core of the universe, as we always are to ourselves.
The Book of the New Sun (1980)
Evolution teaches us the original purpose of language was to ritualize men's threats and curses, his spells to compel the gods; communication came later.
What is perceived is dictated by the instrument. If you had other eyes, or another mind, you would see all things otherwise.
The Book of the New Sun (1980)
When neither our fellows nor our gods spoil our plans, we spoil them ourselves.
The Book of the Long Sun (1993)
Most Christians know next to nothing about the life and teachings of Christ and are afraid to learn, sensing that the knowledge will upset their preconceptions.
Religion and science have always been matters of faith in something. It is the same something.
It’s easy—very easy—to slay a ruler. But it’s very difficult to prevent a worse one from coming to his place.
The Book of the New Sun (1980)
We're going to fight to the end. But it's better if you fight to somebody else's end.
The Book of the Short Sun (1999)
Almost any interesting work of art comes close to saying the opposite of what it really says.
Very small, child, are the flying days of love, and men and women must catch them when they can, if they are to know love at all.
Empires of Foliage and Flower (1987)
Some are haunted by ghosts. I am haunted by stories.
The Best of Gene Wolfe (2009)
A crowd is not the sum of the individuals who compose it. Rather it is a species of animal, without language or real consciousness, born when they gather, dying when they depart.
The Shadow of the Torturer (1980)