Wolfe Quotes

Just when I despaired -- she was there, filling me as a melody fills a cottage. I was with her, running beside the Acis when we were a child. I knew the ancient villa moated by a dark lake, the view through the dusty windows of the belvedere, and the secret space in the odd angle between two rooms where we sat at noon to read by candlelight. I knew the life of the Autarch's court, where poison waited in a diamond cup. I learned what it was for one who had never seen a cell or felt a whip to be a prisoner of the torturers, what dying meant, and death.

I learned that I had been more to her than I had ever guessed, and at last fell into a sleep in which my dreams were all of her. Not memories merely -- memories I had possessed in plenty before. I held her poor, cold hands in mine, and I no longer wore the rags of an apprentice, nor the fuligin of a journeyman. We were one, naked and happy and clean, and we knew that she was no more and that I still lived, and we struggled against neither of those things, but with woven hair read from a single book and talked and sang of other matters. ~ Gene Wolfe

The raw food wave has swept through, and now it is the superfoods wave. The next thing to happen will be super herbalism. ~ David Wolfe

It is a part of our office to stand uncloaked, masked, sword bared, upon the scaffold for a long time before the client is brought out. Some say this is to symbolize the unsleeping omnipresence of justice, but I believe the real reason is to give the crowd a focus, and the feeling that something is about to take place. A crowd is not the sum of the individuals who compose it. Rather it is a species of animal, without language or real consciousness, born when they gather, dying when they depart. Before the Hall of Justice, a ring of dimarchi surrounded the scaffold with their lances, and the pistol their officer carried could, I suppose, have killed fifty or sixty before someone could snatch it from him and knock him to the cobblestones to die. Still it is better to have a focus, and some open symbol of power.
Wolfe, Gene (1994-10-15). Shadow & Claw: The First Half of 'The Book of the New Sun' (p. 184). Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition. ~ Gene Wolfe

As long as you have a book, you are never truly alone. ~ Sunny Wolfe

Nonfiction is never going to die. ~ Tom Wolfe

If you have a machine with three or four parts, you can shake them up in a box and it's still pretty clear what's there. If you have a machine with 10,000 parts and you shake them up in a box, what you have is a box of junk. ~ Gene Wolfe

I won't ask for the moon just yet, but that doesn't mean I don't hope for it. ~ Cecily Wolfe

Courtesy is one's own affair, but decency is a debt to life ~ Rex Stout

Go, forget me! why should sorrow
O'er that brow a shadow fling?
Go, forget me, and to-morrow
Brightly smile and sweetly sing!
Smile, - though I shall not be near thee;
Sing, - though I shall never hear thee! ~ Charles Wolfe

But I was awake, sitting by the window looking down at the trailer and Mr. Zoltan's truck. I could not sleep. That is how it is with folks my age. We take naps during the day, and then we cannot sleep at night. I think that it is because God is getting us ready for the grave. Is that right? Did He ever tell you? ("The Little Stranger") ~ Gene Wolfe

In ordinary perception, the senses send an overwhelming flood of information to the brain, which the brain then filters down to a trickle it can manage for the purpose of survival in a highly competitive world. Man has become so rational, so utilitarian, that the trickle becomes most pale and thin. It is efficient, for mere survival, but it screens out the most wondrous parts of man's potential experience without his even knowing it. We're shut off from our own world. Primitive man once experienced the rich and sparkling flood of the senses fully. Children experience it for a few months-until "normal" training, conditioning, close the doors on this other world, usually for good. Somehow, the drugs opened these ancient doors. And through them modern man may at last go, and rediscover his divine birthright ... ~ Tom Wolfe

Those who find beauty in all of nature will find themselves at one with the secrets of life itself. ~ L. Wolfe Gilbert

But I had long since learned from Wolfe that the corner the light doesn't reach is the one the dime rolled to. ~ Rex Stout

Not all demons are born to the dark. And not all angels seek the light. Sometimes our circumstance demands a fusion of both. There is no good and evil. Only the time spent between both heaven and hell, where we find our peace. And love. Even the vilest of monsters deserve to be loved. ~ Trisha Wolfe

My body is on fire, aching and clawing at me to set it free. It wants to come out to play alright. It wants recess with Ian. He's everything I'm not, and I love it. ~ Scarlet Wolfe

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

[Death is] to lose the earth you know, for greater knowing; to lose the life you have, for greater life; to leave the friends you loved, for greater loving; to find a land more kind than home, more large than earth. - THOMAS WOLFE, YOU CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN ~ Wiley Cash

We writers spent the entire twentieth century tearing down the bourgeoisie! ... We in the arts have been complicit in the denigration of the best people on earth. Why? Because so many of the most influential ideas of our time are the product of a new creature of the twentieth century, a creature that did not exist until 1898 - and that creature is known as 'the intellectual. ~ Tom Wolfe

Following his studies with Carrel, Voronoff worked in Egypt for the Egyptian king. Voronoff soon became fascinated with the eunuchs that were part of the king's harem. In particular, he noted that the castration they received seemed to increase the speed at which the eunuchs aged. This observation was the beginning of Voronoff's obsession with a surgical answer to aging. Likely inspired by the pioneering work of his mentor and the excitement of the new surgical techniques, Voronoff began to dabble in experimental transplantation. But he went beyond the techniques that his mentor had perfected. In early experiments Voronoff transplanted the testicles of a lamb into an old ram, claiming that the transplant served to thicken the ram's wool and increase its sex drive. These early studies foreshadowed the work that would follow. ~ Nathan Wolfe

convoy of minecarts ~ Sean Fay Wolfe

There is no magic. There is only knowledge, more or less hidden. ~ Gene Wolfe

The modern picture of the artist began to form: The poor, but free spirit, plebeian but aspiring only to be classless, to cut himself forever free from the bonds of the greedy bourgeoisie, to be whatever the fat burghers feared most, to cross the line wherever they drew it, to look at the world in a way they couldn't see, to be high, live low, stay young forever
in short, to be the bohemian. ~ Thomas Wolfe

Our freedom must be had at all hazards. If the men of property will not help us they must fall; we will free ourselves by the aid of that large and respectable class of the community - the men of no property. ~ Wolfe Tone

The wolfe eats oft of the sheep that have been warn'd. ~ George Herbert

The Pranksters were now out among them, and it was exhilarating
look at the mothers staring!
and there was going to be holy terror in the land. But there would also be people who would look up out of their work-a-daddy lives in some town, some old guy, somebody's stenographer, and see this bus and register ... delight, or just pure open-invitation wonder. Either way, the Intrepid Travelers figured, there was hope for these people. They weren't totally turned off ... the citizens were suitably startled, outraged, delighted, nonplused, and would wheel around and start or else try to keep their cool by sidling glances like they weren't going to be impressed by any weird shit
and a few smiled in a frank way as if to say, I am with you
if only I could be with you! ~ Tom Wolfe

You cannot have chocolate without cacao. The cacao bean is chocolate. All chocolate contains at least some ground up cacao beans. ~ David Wolfe

Good Hobbinoll, what garres thee greete?
What! hath some wolfe thy tender lambes ytorne?
Or is thy bagpype broke, that soundes so sweete?
Or art thou of thy loved lasse forlorne? ~ Edmund Spenser

The world was simply and sheerly divided into 'the aware', those who had the experience of being vessels of the divine, and a great mass of 'the unaware', 'the unmusical', 'the unattuned. ~ Tom Wolfe

The Wolfe knowes, what the ill beast thinkes. ~ George Herbert

Possessed with a full confidence of the certain success which British valor must gain over such enemies, I have led you up these steep and dangerous rocks, only solicitous to show you the foe within your reach. ~ James Wolfe

A slow trickle of lust crawled painfully down the parched gully of desire, and ended feebly in dry fumbling lechery. ~ Thomas Wolfe

I used to go through the dictionary looking for unusual but nontechnical words. At one time, I thought the greatest word was 'jejune' and I would throw it into every piece because something about it appealed to me. ~ Tom Wolfe

When, sometime around my fortieth birthday, I was struck by the urge to try to write a novel, I was vastly comforted to learn that Rex Stout didn't write his first Nero Wolfe tale until he was forty-seven, and that he proceeded to write them right up to his death at the age of eighty-eight. It was considerably less comforting to learn that he typically completed a novel in thirty-eight days, and that he always got it right on the first try. P. G. Wodehouse once said, "Stout's supreme triumph was the creation of Archie Goodwin." That's how I've always felt about it, too. When I returned those first Rex Stout books to my librarian, I said to her, "Do you have any more of these Archie Goodwin stories?" She smiled, I recall, and said, "Why, yes. Dozens. ~ Rex Stout

Dorcas's skin was flecked with little golden freckles, and she was so slender that I was always aware of her bones; yet she was more desirable in her imperfections than Jolenta had ever been in the lushness of her flesh. ~ Gene Wolfe

Of all I have ever seen or learned, that book seems to me the noblest, the wisest, and the most powerful expression of man's life upon this earth - and also the highest flower of poetry, eloquence, and truth. I am not given to dogmatic judgments in the matter of literary creation, but if I had to make one I could say that Ecclesiastes is the greatest single piece of writing I have ever known, and the wisdom expressed in it the most lasting and profound. ~ Thomas Wolfe

I always get what I want, Rogan. Always."
"And what about what I want?"
Wolfe pressed a soft, tender kiss to my lips, the arrogance giving way to deep sincerity. "I'll always give you what you want, Rogan. Always. ~ Samantha Young

There is something in all of us that has always been dead," I said. "If only because we know that eventually we will die. All of us except the smallest children. ~ Gene Wolfe

The gem, which he had supposed colorless, caught a ray of sunlight from the god-gate in the roof and flashed a watery green. For some reason, it reminded him of her eyes. He put it to his lips, his thoughts full of things that could never be. ~ Gene Wolfe

You must know the story of how the race of ancient days reached the stars, and how they bargained away all the wild half of themselves to do so, so that they no longer cared for the taste of the pale wind, no for love or lust, nor to make new songs nor to sing old ones, nor for any of the other animal things they believed they had brought with them out of the rain forests al the bottom of time
though in fact, so my uncle told me, those things brought them ~ Gene Wolfe

Evolution teaches us the original purpose of language was to ritualize men's threats and curses, his spells to compel the gods; communication came later. ~ Gene Wolfe

It's like we're strands of wire intertwined in a great cable that runs through a slot ... Most people lead two-dimensional lives. All they can see is the face of the slot, a cross section, so that the wires look like a mass of separate little circles looking bigger or smaller according to how close you are. They don't
they can't see that these 'circles' are just cross sections of wires that run backward and forward infinitely and that there is a great surge through the whole cable and that anybody who is truly into the full bare essence of the thing ... ~ Tom Wolfe

The mountains were his masters. They rimmed in life. They were the cup of reality, beyond growth, beyond struggle and death. They were his absolute unity in the midst of eternal change. ~ Thomas Wolfe

I wrote a number of pieces in the year 1966 that were so bad that, although I'm a great collector of my own pieces, I have never collected them. ~ Tom Wolfe

No, I don't take soup. You can't build a meal on a lake. ~ Elsie De Wolfe

As they drove on the quiet A3320 towards Notting Hill, Doris spoke. "He won't, you know. He won't pay the ransom."
Wolfe offered her a reassuring smile, but inside his stomach housed a million butterflies. Shamefully, he passed wind again, the words of his captive disconcerting him on his journey to Shepherd's Bush. ~ Anthony Hulse

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

I am going in now for interior decoration. By that I mean supplying objets d'art and giving advice regarding the decoration of their houses to wealthy persons who do not have the time, inclination, nor culture to do such work for themselves. It is nothing new. Women have done the same thing before. ~ Elsie De Wolfe

Don't make each room a different color in a small apartment or you'll make yourself nervous. ~ Elsie De Wolfe

Though trodden beneath the shepherd's heel, the wild hyacinth blooms on the ground. ~ Gene Wolfe

Telling the truth is a pretty hard thing. And in a young man's first attempt, with the distortions of his vanity, egotism, hot passion, and lacerated pride, it is almost impossible. "Home to Our Mountains" was marred by all these faults and imperfections ... [Webber] did know that it was not altogether a true book. Still, there was truth in it.
...
[from Randy] There were places where [your book] rubbed salt in. In saying this, I'm not like those others you complain about: you know damn well I understand what you did and why you had to do it. But just the same, there were some things that you did not have to do
and you'd have had a better book if you hadn't done them. ~ Thomas Wolfe

The hope in her voice now made me think of a flower growing in shadow. ~ Gene Wolfe

If an alien visited Earth, they would take some note of humans, but probably spend most of their time trying to understand the dominant form of life on our planet - microorganisms like bacteria and viruses. ~ Nathan Wolfe

Nerds ... the 'nerd' has never been precisely defined, thanks to the psychological complexity of the creature. The word has connotations of some level of intelligence. The typical nerd is a male with intelligence but no sense of giving it a manly face. ~ Tom Wolfe

It's frightening because love is unpredictable, emotionally unstable, and uncontainable. ~ S.A. Wolfe

As I always used to tell Thomas Wolfe, there are three things you just can't do in life. You can't beat the phone company, you can't make a waiter see you until he's ready to see you, and you can't go home again. ~ Bill Bryson

The only shame George Webber felt was that at one time in his life, for however short a period, he broke bread and sat at the same table with any man when the living warmth of friendship was not there; or that he ever traded upon the toil of his brain and the blood of his heart to get the body of a scented whore that might have been better got in a brothel for some greasy coins. This was the only shame he felt. And this shame was so great in him that he wondered if all his life thereafter would be long enough to wash out of his brain and blood the last pollution of its loathsome taint. ~ Thomas Wolfe

Experts may help assemble data, specialists may organize it, professionals may offer theories to explain it. But none of these can substitute for each person's own leap into the dark, jumping in to draw his or her own conclusions. ~ Charles R. Wolfe

The Grateful Dead did not play in sets; no eight numbers to a set, then a twenty-five-minute break, and so on, four or five sets and then the close-out. The Dead might play one number for five minutes or thirty minutes. Who kept time? Who could keep time, with history cut up in slices. The Dead could get just as stoned as anyone else. The ... non-attuned would look about and here would be all manner of heads, including those running the show, the Pranksters, stroked out against the walls like slices of Jello. Waiting; with nobody looking very likely to start it back up. Those who didn't care to wait would tend to drift off, stoned or otherwise, and the Test would settle down to the pudding. ~ Tom Wolfe

He is the oldest of our sons, and although I loved him, I did not like him. ~ Gene Wolfe

At the outset, at least, all three groups had something else to recommend them, as well: They were headquartered 3,000 miles away from the East Side of Manhattan. ~ Tom Wolfe

Peace fell upon her spirit. Strong comfort and assurance bathed her whole being. Life was so solid and splendid, and so good. ~ Thomas Wolfe

Love and obsession are so closely linked, the emotions evoked by obsession easily mistaken for love. And when obsession rules your world, you become a slave to its demands. ~ Trisha Wolfe

I was born with the courage to live. Only those are unwise who have never dared to be fools. ~ Elsie De Wolfe

The progress of science depends much less upon either theoretical considerations or systematic investigation than is commonly believed, but rather on the transmittal of reliable information, gained by chance or insight, from one set of men to their successors. ~ Gene Wolfe

You're the boss," he said.

"No, he's the boss," said Tate, gesturing at Wingate. "Right, Boss?"

"I'm acting boss," he said. "The real boss is in the car."

"You're the acting CO for an acting CO, right? You guys have commitment issues? ~ Inger Ash Wolfe

Culture is the arts elevated to a set of beliefs. ~ Thomas Wolfe

The avoidance of idiocy should be the primary and constant concern of every intelligent person, - Nero Wolfe ~ Rex Stout

Live events and lectures in front of large audiences. It is the best. I like it more than eating dinner. ~ David Wolfe

It has been remarked thousands of times that Christ died under torture. Many of us have read so often that he was a "humble carpenter" that we feel a little surge of nausea on seeing the words yet again. But no one ever seems to notice that the instruments of torture were wood, nails, and a hammer; that the man who built the cross was undoubtedly a carpenter too; that the man who hammered in the nails was as much a carpenter as a soldier, as much a carpenter as a torturer. Very few seem even to have noticed that although Christ was a "humble carpenter," the only object we are specifically told he made was not a table or a chair, but a whip. ~ Gene Wolfe

You're mine, London. We can dance this violent dance until we bleed each other dry, or we can surrender. Your choice. But I will have you. ~ Trisha Wolfe

For every woman, there is that one man who could get her to go anywhere he wanted her to go, do anything he wanted her to do - reach into her soul and turn her whole world on its ear - challenge everything she thought she believed.
Highlighted by 24 Kindle users ~ Lenore Wolfe

Not long after I published my first book, I quickly found I was terrible at being interviewed. ~ Tom Wolfe

A young man seeks a woman and finds her and is great and dies to the world. Afterward he is never as great again, but the woman is a comfort to him, reminding him of the time that was, and he is a little again with her what once he was wholly. ~ Gene Wolfe

It's fortunate that I am a writer, because that has helped me understand the properties of words. They are what have made life complex. In the battle for status in the animal kingdom, power and aggressiveness have been all-important. But among humans, once they acquired speech, all that changed. ~ Tom Wolfe

I was miserable before I knew I was no longer happy ~ Gene Wolfe

It then became intolerable that while I was not in any way interested in the world's affairs the world should have decided to interfere so spectacularly in mine. [ ... ] I am tired of offering my services as a smokescreen when there is a good chance of my being dismembered in the process and when I don't approve of what's being screened anyhow. ~ Bernard Wolfe

It's like a boulder rolling down a hill - you can watch it and talk about it and scream and say Shit! but you can't stop it. It's just a question of where it's going to go. ~ Tom Wolfe

There is no happy land. There is no end to hunger. ~ Thomas Wolfe

[At first sight of the Acropolis:] It's beige! My color! ~ Elsie De Wolfe

People complain about my exclamation points, but I honestly think that's the way people think. I don't think people think in essays; it's one exclamation point to another. ~ Tom Wolfe

Any group arrogant enough to believe that it has the exclusive ability to "Save the Planet" will inevitably conclude that any crimes are justified in pursuit of its `higher purpose. ~ Edward M. Wolfe

out of death, life, out of the coarse rank earth, a flower. ~ Thomas Wolfe

[F]or he had heard an inarticulate promise: he has been pierced by Spring, that sharp knife. And life unscales its rusty weathered pelt, and earth wells out in tender exhaustless strength, and the cup of a man's heart runs over with dateless expectancy, tongueless promise, indefinable desire. Something gathers in the throat, something blinds him in the eyes, and faint and valorous horns sound through the earth. ~ Thomas Wolfe

I'm more influenced by people's attitudes and spirits than by their particular style. Whether it's Elsie de Wolfe or Pauline de Rothschild, I always admire women who had a vision and stuck to it. Because ultimately, the way you live has to be a reflection of you. ~ Charlotte Moss

I am filthy. So is Doris, but we'll bathe and change clothes and be clean. Your filth is within you. If it were gone, you'd collapse. ~ Gene Wolfe

'No Hands' art goes straight back to Warhol. He was the first to use elves. ~ Tom Wolfe

The human being must always be central, not the products and objects of his skill and energy. ~ Bernard Wolfe

I do not have it in for relativism. In many respects I find it a fascinating, even attractive, alternative. It engenders epistemological humility, defeats an arrogant pomposity in belief, even promotes a sort of democratic ideal in matters of knowledge. Perhaps its most comforting feature is that it requires no hard work at all in the matter of justifying beliefs. ~ David L. Wolfe

Paleo is not a diet. It's not a fad. It's not a rigid set of rules to follow. It's not a sound bite. It's an exploration of history, nutrition, the human diet, and, most important, our health. ~ Liz Wolfe

It's not you. It's her. ~ Rayne Wolfe

There is one final point, the point that separates a true multivolume work from a short story, a novel, or a series. The ending of the final volume should leave the reader with the feeling that he has gone through the defining circumstances of Main Character's life. The leading character in a series can wander off into another book and a new adventure better even than this one. Main Character cannot, at the end of your multivolume work. (Or at least, it should seem so.) His life may continue, and in most cases it will. He may or may not live happily ever after. But the problems he will face in the future will not be as important to him or to us, nor the summers as golden. ~ Gene Wolfe

Never, under any circumstance, do I touch soup, as I do not believe in building a meal on a lake. ~ Elsie De Wolfe

The Whorl, whose inhabitants keep watch for an outsider ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

His enemy was time. Or perhaps it was his friend. One never knows for sure. ~ Thomas Wolfe

If a man has a talent and cannot use it, he has failed. If he has a talent and only uses half of it, he has partly failed. If he has a talent and learns to use the whole of it, he has gloriously succeeded, and won a satisfaction and triumph few men will know. - Thomas Wolfe ~ Thomas Wolfe

I hate people in general, but you guys are cool with me. ~ Edward M. Wolfe

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

He was a bad man, a bully and a thug, yet he was deeply religious in his way - I very much doubt that he would have made such a thing up. It was not his sort of lie, if you know what I mean. ~ Gene Wolfe

She was wearing a skirt and a big-shouldered jacket of a royal blue that was fashionable in France, a blue-and-white-striped silk blouse, and electric-blue lizard pumps with white calf caps on the toes. ~ Tom Wolfe

And she did not weep for herself, but for him: the hour after his birth she had looked in his dark eyes and had seen something that would brood there eternally, she knew, unfathomable wells of remote and intangible loneliness: she knew that in her dark and sorrowful womb a stranger had come to life, fed by the lost communications of eternity, his own ghost, haunter of his own house, lonely to himself and to the world. O lost. ~ Thomas Wolfe