Gene Wolfe Quotes

“I am deserving of no gifts."

"That is so. But you must recall, Severian, that when a gift is deserved, it is not a gift but payment.”
― Gene Wolfe, The Shadow of the Torturer

“Here I pause. If you wish to walk no farther with me, reader, I do not blame you. It is no easy road.”
― Gene Wolfe

“We say that a man is as brave as an atrox, or that a woman is as lovely as a red roe, as [she] was. But we lack any such term for loyalty, because nothing we know is truly loyal---or rather, because true loyalty is found only in the individual and not in the type. A son may be loyal to his father or a dog to its master, but most are not...perhaps we are unable to advance some paragon of loyalty to an apothegm only because loyalty (in the final analysis) is choice.”
― Gene Wolfe, The Urth of the New Sun

“What a man knows hardly matters. It is what he does.”
― Gene Wolfe The Wizard