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Weak people believe what is forced on them. Strong people what they wish to believe, forcing that to be real.

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
Wish
Strong
Real
Believe
Forcing
People
Forced
Weakness
Weak

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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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God is the nest we build together.
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When a gift is deserved, it is not a gift but a payment.
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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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...in some situations winning consist[s] of disentangling oneself.
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You seem to think that the only genuine existence evil can have is conscious existence - that no one is evil unless he admits it to himself. I disagree.
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That we are capable only of being what we are remains our unforgivable sin.
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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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Have a short story feature two situations, and then let them solve each other.
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Religion and science have always been matters of faith in something. It is the same something.
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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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All novels are fantasies. Some are more honest about it.
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Knowledge is soon changed, then lost in the mist, an echo half-heard.
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What a man knows hardly matters. It is what he does.
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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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Hope is a psychological mechanism unaffected by external realities.
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A youthful American voice isn't particularly challenging - I've been a young American, and they're all around me. I can walk from my house to Barrington High School.
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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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I could speculate, but it would be just speculation and the kind of thing that you would get in with a science fiction story. And if I was doing a science fiction story then I would come up with what can go wrong with this system.
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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.
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