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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
Believe
People
Forcing
Forced
Weakness
Weak
Wish
Strong
Real

More quotes by Gene Wolfe

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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.
Gene Wolfe
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Then I could not help wondering what the watching gods thought of us, with our clever masks and our jokes. What we think of crickets, perhaps, whose singing we hear with pleasure, though some of us smash them with our heels when they venture into sight.
Gene Wolfe
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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.
Gene Wolfe
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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?
Gene Wolfe
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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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We think that we know a man or a woman, when so much of what we know is actually that man's or that woman's situation, his or her place on the board of life. Move the pawn to the last row and see her rise in armor, sword in hand.
Gene Wolfe
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...I rejoiced in the flaws that made her more real to me
Gene Wolfe
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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.
Gene Wolfe
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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.
Gene Wolfe
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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.
Gene Wolfe
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There is no limit to stupidity. - Space itself is said to be bounded by its own curvature, but stupidity continues beyond infinity.
Gene Wolfe
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...in some situations winning consist[s] of disentangling oneself.
Gene Wolfe
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Hope is a psychological mechanism unaffected by external realities.
Gene Wolfe
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We have treatments for disturbed persons, Nicholas. But, at least for the time being, we have no treatment for disturbing persons.
Gene Wolfe
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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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People don't want other people to be people.
Gene Wolfe
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I get a lot of people complaining about my ambiguity, often in cases which there is nothing ambigous at all. As far as I can see, people read it when they were half stoned and listening to the TV. Then they come back and say gee, it's impossible to figure out what's going on in a story.
Gene Wolfe
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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.
Gene Wolfe
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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.
Gene Wolfe
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Have a short story feature two situations, and then let them solve each other.
Gene Wolfe