Gene Wolfe

Writer

1931-05-07

Books by Gene Wolfe

The Shadow of the Torturer
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Again, Dangerous Visions
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Book of the New Sun

the shadow of the torturer ; The claw of the conciliator ; The sword of the lictor ; The citadel of the autarch
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Quotes by Gene Wolfe

We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges.
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Reality is a crutch for people who can't handle science fiction.
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Weak people believe what is forced on them. Strong people what they wish to believe, forcing that to be real.
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It seems to me that you can almost define civilization by saying it's people who are not willing to hurt other people because the other people are different.
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People don't want other people to be people.
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There is no magic. There is only knowledge, more or less hidden.
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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.
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There is one final point, the point that separates a true multivolume work from a short story, a novel, or a series. The ending of the final volume should leave the reader with the feeling that he has gone through the defining circumstances of Main Character's life. The leading character in a series can wander off into another book and a new adventure better even than this one. Main Character cannot, at the end of your multivolume work. (Or at least, it should seem so.) His life may continue, and in most cases it will. He may or may not live happily ever after. But the problems he will face in the future will not be as important to him or to us, nor the summers as golden.
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And what of the dead? I own that I thought of myself, at times, almost as dead. Are they not locked below ground in chambers smaller than mine was, in their millions of millions? There is no category of human activity in which the dead do not outnumber the living many times over. Most beautiful children are dead. Most soldiers, most cowards. The fairest women and the most learned men – all are dead. Their bodies repose in caskets, in sarcophagi, beneath arches of rude stone, everywhere under the earth. Their spirits haunt our minds, ears pressed to the bones of our foreheads. Who can say how intently they listen as we speak, or for what word?
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Hope is a psychological mechanism unaffected by external realities.
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Time turns our lies into truths.
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People don't want other people to be people.
Read quote
Reality is a crutch for people who can't handle science fiction.
Read quote
It seems to me that you can almost define civilization by saying it's people who are not willing to hurt other people because the other people are different.
Read quote
And what of the dead? I own that I thought of myself, at times, almost as dead. Are they not locked below ground in chambers smaller than mine was, in their millions of millions? There is no category of human activity in which the dead do not outnumber the living many times over. Most beautiful children are dead. Most soldiers, most cowards. The fairest women and the most learned men – all are dead. Their bodies repose in caskets, in sarcophagi, beneath arches of rude stone, everywhere under the earth. Their spirits haunt our minds, ears pressed to the bones of our foreheads. Who can say how intently they listen as we speak, or for what word?
Read quote
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.
Read quote
There is no magic. There is only knowledge, more or less hidden.
Read quote
Hope is a psychological mechanism unaffected by external realities.
Read quote
There is one final point, the point that separates a true multivolume work from a short story, a novel, or a series. The ending of the final volume should leave the reader with the feeling that he has gone through the defining circumstances of Main Character's life. The leading character in a series can wander off into another book and a new adventure better even than this one. Main Character cannot, at the end of your multivolume work. (Or at least, it should seem so.) His life may continue, and in most cases it will. He may or may not live happily ever after. But the problems he will face in the future will not be as important to him or to us, nor the summers as golden.
Read quote
Time turns our lies into truths.
Read quote