The Claw of the Conciliator Quotes

“That we are capable only of being what we are remains our unforgivable sin.”
― Gene Wolfe, The Claw of the Conciliator

“Time itself is a thing, so it seems to me, that stands solidly like a fence of iron palings with its endless row of years; and we flow past like Gyoll, on our way to a sea from which we shall return only as rain.”
― Gene Wolfe, The Claw of the Conciliator

“I believe there is no other difference between those who are called courageous and those who are branded craven than that the second are fearful before the danger and the first after it. No one can be much frightened, certainly, during a period of great and imminent peril -- the mind is too much concentrated on the thing itself, and on the actions necessary to meet or avoid it. The coward is a coward, then, because he has brought his fear with him; persons we think cowardly will sometimes amaze us by their bravery, if they have had no forewarning of their danger.”
― Gene Wolfe, The Claw of the Conciliator

“But I believe there is no difference between those who are called courageous and those who are branded craven than that the second are fearful before the danger and the first after it. The coward is a coward, then, because he has brought his fear with him; persons we think cowardly will sometimes amaze us by their bravery, if they have had no forewarning of their danger.”
― Gene Wolfe, The Claw of the Conciliator

“Reason shows reason can only bring pain - how wise to forget and be happy again!”
― Gene Wolfe, The Claw of the Conciliator

“I was trapped in admiration for what I had once admired, as a fly in amber remains the captive of some long-vanished pine.”
― Gene Wolfe, The Claw of the Conciliator

“Whatever we may say, all of us suffer from disturbed sleep at times.
Some in truth hardly sleep, though some who sleep copiously swear that they do not.
Some are disquieted by incessant dreams, and a fortunate few are visited often by dreams of delightful character.
Some will say that they were at one time troubled in sleeping but have 'recovered' from it, as though awareness were a disease, as perhaps it is.”
― Gene Wolfe, The Claw of the Conciliator

“People don’t want other people to be people. They throw names over them and lock them in,”
― Gene Wolfe, The Claw of the Conciliator

“I lifted my sword to Heaven then, to the diminished sun with the worm in his heart; and I called, "His life for mine, New Sun, by your anger and my hope!”
― Gene Wolfe, The Claw of the Conciliator

“There is no magic. There is only knowledge, more or less hidden.’ Hildegrin”
― Gene Wolfe, The Claw of the Conciliator

“I feel as if I were waking up,’ Jonas said. ‘I think I said yesterday that I was afraid I would go mad. I think perhaps I’m going sane, and that is as bad or worse.”
― Gene Wolfe, The Claw of the Conciliator

“This world that you and we treasure has now been driven round the sun so often that the warp and woof of its space grow threadbare and fall as dust and feeble lint from the loom of time.”
― Gene Wolfe, The Claw of the Conciliator

“Death is nothing, and for that reason you must fear it.”
― Gene Wolfe, The Claw of the Conciliator

“I drive away those who pay to see me by foretelling their futures, and I will foretell yours. You are young now, and strong. But before the world has wound itself ten times more about the sun you shall be less strong, and you shall never regain the strength that is yours now. If you breed sons, you will engender enemies against yourself. If--"

"Enough!" I said. "What you are telling me is only the fortune of all men.”
― Gene Wolfe, The Claw of the Conciliator

“I am not a talking vegetable, as you should be able to see. Even if a planet were to follow the one evolutionary way, out of some many millions, that leads to intelligence, it is impossible that it should duplicate in wood and leaf the form of a human being."

"The same thing might be said of stones, yet there are statues.”
― Gene Wolfe, The Claw of the Conciliator

“When my grandson-in-law heard about it, he was fairly struck flat for half a day. Then he pasted up a kind of hat out of paper and held it over my stove, and it went up, and then he thought it was nothing that the cathedral rose, no miracle at all. That shows what it is to be a fool—it never came to him that the reason things were made so was so the cathedral would rise just like it did. He can't see the Hand in nature.”
― Gene Wolfe, The Claw of the Conciliator

“I don't think he hates in the way we understand it. Or for that matter, that he loves. He wants to manipulate everything he comes upon, to change it with his will. And since tearing down is easier than building, that's what he does most often.”
― Gene Wolfe, The Claw of the Conciliator

“I saw how little it weighed on the scale of things whether I lived or died, though my life was precious to me. And of those two thoughts I forged a mood by which I stood ready to grasp each smallest chance to live, yet in which I cared not too much whether I saved myself or not. By that mood, as I think, I did live; it has been so good a friend to me that I have endeavored to wear it ever since, succeeding not always, but often.”
― Gene Wolfe, The Claw of the Conciliator

“What good is this gift of speech, except that I can curse myself. Good mother of all the beasts, take it from me. I would be as I was, and shout wordless among the hills. Reason shows reason can only bring pain - how wise to forget and be happy again!”
― Gene Wolfe, The Claw of the Conciliator