Quote

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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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
Leave
Future
Past
Exists
Stills
Toward
Truth
Exist
Doe
Behinds
Still
Journey
Time
Behind

More quotes by 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.
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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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Religion and science have always been matters of faith in something. It is the same something.
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What a man knows hardly matters. It is what he does.
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Hope is a psychological mechanism unaffected by external realities.
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Knowledge is soon changed, then lost in the mist, an echo half-heard.
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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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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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All novels are fantasies. Some are more honest about it.
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Have a short story feature two situations, and then let them solve each other.
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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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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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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.
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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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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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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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People don't want other people to be people.
Gene Wolfe
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That we are capable only of being what we are remains our unforgivable sin.
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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When a gift is deserved, it is not a gift but a payment.
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