Starwater Strains Quotes

“The two thought themselves alone. But all the while, one watched with the night-wide eyes of love. While they paced the pebbled paths between the silent flowers’ spiked arrays, sage Thyme spied upon each pale sigh, peeping between bloom and leaf. And while they sat side by side and hand in hand on the stained stone bench beneath the spreading wisteria, Thyme watched unwinking from the midnight face of the mute sundial. And while they lay lazy on the soft grass, swearing the sweet oaths of love and longing, and whispering as they parted that though long lives might pass like a night and the New Sun sunder the centuries, yet never should they ever part, Thyme crept and cried, counting seconds that spilled with the sand from the hourglass, and scenting the soft breezes that cooled the child’s burning cheek with his sad spice. The”
― Gene Wolfe, Starwater Strains: New Science Fiction Stories

“We leave them to others. The day came when they stood at the right hand of the dwarf, with their feet upon sand and millet at their backs, and all three stood much taller than he. And upon that day he called across the desert to their mother. Small though he was, his voice was large, and held the pain of a thousand beatings and the pain of a lover who knows that love is past.”
― Gene Wolfe, Starwater Strains: New Science Fiction Stories

“It is not easy for me to speak of the desert. Still less easy is it for me to scribe it as I do. There is so much that might be said; and yet no one who reads this will have understanding of the desert. Not even those who share this ship with me have it. One must go. I say again: one must go. I went. Perhaps there can be too much understanding. I have so much now, and that is why I will never forget this place. My companions understand nothing of that. The whisper of the sands, and the night silence when the sands no longer spoke.”
― Gene Wolfe, Starwater Strains: New Science Fiction Stories

“So after that, I thought what if you hadn’t been here. And it hit me—it hit me very hard—that millions of other men will come home, and can’t even hope that you might be there, waiting, the way you were for me. That even if you hadn’t been there I would be privileged like nobody else on earth, because I could hope—really hope, not deluding myself—that you might be. That love’s disappointments are better than success in other things.” He”
― Gene Wolfe, Starwater Strains: New Science Fiction Stories

“You may kiss me and eat one bite of my apple,” she told him. “One bite, no more.” He was frightened, and shook his head. “One bite will let you understand everything.” Her voice was music. “Two bites would let you understand more than everything, and more than everything is too much.” He backed away. The”
― Gene Wolfe, Starwater Strains: New Science Fiction Stories