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Year followed struggling year for me, and all that time I read - I suppose few have ever read so. I began, as most young people do, by reading the books I enjoyed. But I found that narrowed my pleasure.

Gene Wolfe

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Gene Wolfe
Age: 87 †
Born: 1931
Born: May 7
Died: 2019
Died: April 14
Editor
Mechanical Engineer
Military Engineer
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
New York City
New York
Gene Rodman Wolfe
Book
Books
Years
Pleasure
Narrowed
Time
Year
Struggling
People
Reading
Followed
Read
Suppose
Found
Enjoyed
Young
Began
Ever
Struggle

More quotes by Gene Wolfe

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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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Men to whom wine had brought death long before lay by springs of wine and drank still, too stupefied to know their lives were past.
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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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All time exists. That is the truth.... If the future did not exist now, how could we journey toward it? If the past does not exist still, how could we leave it behind?
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...I rejoiced in the flaws that made her more real to me
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All novels are fantasies. Some are more honest about it.
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There's a certain kind of lonely man who rejects love, because he believes that anyone who offers it wouldn't be a lover worth having.
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All the history of the stage is a struggle, the gasping of a beautiful child born at the point of death. The moralists, censorship and oppression, technology, and now poverty have all tried to destroy her. Only we, the actors and audiences, have kept her alive.
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What a man knows hardly matters. It is what he does.
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Men are said to desire women, Severian. Why do they despise the women they obtain?
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I don't think anyone is more intrinsically holy. People experience God in many ways and it seems to me that God does what the rest of us do: He chooses the means that best gets His message across.
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Hope is a psychological mechanism unaffected by external realities.
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We only have one dog now. Calamity Jane had to be put down. She was very old, and her medicine no longer controlled her seizures. Dilly is five now, I think. He's a neutered American Pit Bull Terrier, very gentle, about the color of buckskin.
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When a gift is deserved, it is not a gift but a payment.
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My whole life experience feeds into my writing. I think that must be true for every writer. Clearly the Army and combat were major influences just the same, you need to understand that many of the writers we have now couldn't load a revolver.
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Do not start a story unless you have an ending in mind. You can change the story's ending if you wish, but you should always have a destination.
Gene Wolfe
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God is the nest we build together.
Gene Wolfe
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That we are capable only of being what we are remains our unforgivable sin.
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A hundred wise men have said in various ways that love transcends the power of death, and millions of fools have supposed that they meant nothing by it. At this late hour in my life I have learned what they meant. They meant that love transcends death. They are correct.
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Religion and science have always been matters of faith in something. It is the same something.
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