Quote

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.

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
Two
Adults
Improbable
Light
Extraordinary
Accepts
Children
Consider
Incidents
Usually
Commonplace
Accepting
Lights
Knowing
Beneath
Occurrences
Child
Finds
Midway
Interest
Notice
Calmly

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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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Hope is a psychological mechanism unaffected by external realities.
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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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Have a short story feature two situations, and then let them solve each other.
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...I rejoiced in the flaws that made her more real to me
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Religion and science have always been matters of faith in something. It is the same something.
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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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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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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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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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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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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.
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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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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.
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That we are capable only of being what we are remains our unforgivable sin.
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Knowledge is soon changed, then lost in the mist, an echo half-heard.
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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.
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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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Weak people believe what is forced on them. Strong people what they wish to believe, forcing that to be real.
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