Return to the Whorl Quotes

“Though trodden beneath the shepherd’s heel, the wild hyacinth blooms on the ground.”
― Gene Wolfe, Return to the Whorl

“Though trodden beneath the shepherd’s heel, the wild hyacinth blooms on the ground. He”
― Gene Wolfe, Return to the Whorl

“White sparks cascaded onto the trembling wick. It was as if there were shooting stars in his hands, like the stars at the bottom of the grave to which Silk and Hyacinth had driven Orpine’s body in a dream he recalled with uncanny clarity. Here we dig holes in the ground for our dead, he thought, to bring them nearer the Outsider; and on Blue we do the same because we did it here, though it takes them away from him. The”
― Gene Wolfe, Return to the Whorl

“He wanted her to stay, to lie in their boat with him and comfort him, but she vanished when he tried to hold her, and it was getting dark and Green rising, a baleful jade eye. There were water bottles in the racks; but the boat was gone and the salt sea with it, the sea that was a river called Gyoll in which corpses floated, savaged by big turtles with beaks like the beaks of parrots, the river that circled with whorl, the river over which the stars never set. He had come to the end of that river, and it was too late. He”
― Gene Wolfe, Return to the Whorl

“He wanted her to stay, to lie in their boat with him and comfort him, but she vanished when he tried to hold her, and it was getting dark and Green rising, a baleful jade eye. There were water bottles in the racks; but the boat was gone and the salt sea with it, the sea that was a river called Gyoll in which corpses floated, savaged by big turtles with beaks like the beaks of parrots, the river that circled with whorl, the river over which the stars never set. He had come to the end of that river, and it was too”
― Gene Wolfe, Return to the Whorl

“Are you waiting for the end of my story? It’s ended. The day came when I was able to fly up here. I knew by then that I had much more to learn, and that I had to be stronger before I tried Crossing. But I felt I’d come more than halfway, too, and I was right. There was a corroded metal hatch over that window then. I tore it off and let it fall. When I’d explored all the rooms on all the levels, I decided to clean this one out and make it a private place just for myself, my own room in my own tower in the sky. There were bones in here and some other things, but I threw them out that window and swept this floor with my hands. When everything was tidy, I told myself I’d come back and spend hours up here after I’d made the Return Crossing, just thinking about who I was and what I had done for my children. But I never did, till now.” “I’ll”
― Gene Wolfe, Return to the Whorl

“A knife with a worn blade and a cracked wooden handle lay at his feet. Reflexively, he bent to pick it up, and recoiled from it as if from a coiled snake. Something screamed in the emptiness, something deeper than resentment and thoughts of water, food, and healing. He backed away from the knife and stumbled through the open door into the darkest night ever known.     We”
― Gene Wolfe, Return to the Whorl

“If they are too quarrelsome to unite against him, and so violent that they’ll willingly pay his taxes to be protected from one another, they have no reason to complain.”
― Gene Wolfe, Return to the Whorl

“It was a cruel and lawless place without him, and it seems to me that it’s better with him, if anything. A bad horse needs a big whip, as the saying goes.”
― Gene Wolfe, Return to the Whorl

“They were all thoroughly bad people of the type to which I myself belong—that is to say, bad people who are pleased to think themselves good.”
― Gene Wolfe, Return to the Whorl

“Strength and a stout heart are hazardous qualities where they cannot prevail.”
― Gene Wolfe, Return to the Whorl

“You claim the right to prosecute me in accordance with your laws, the laws of Dorp, about which I know nothing. I claim the right to defend myself by the only law I know, the law of reason. Reason demands an impartial judge, and that I be given the advice of someone who knows your law.”
― Gene Wolfe, Return to the Whorl

“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, Return to the Whorl

“Do you imagine you can be cruel without teaching others to be cruel to you? You glory in your cruelty, because you believe it shows you are master of your victim. You are not even your own.”
― Gene Wolfe, Return to the Whorl

“You are still very young. When you are older, perhaps you will come to understand that of all the emotions--and indifference, too, because even indifference is an emotion of a sort--only love sees the unveiled truth.”
― Gene Wolfe, Return to the Whorl

“There are children who sweep hoping to be rewarded, and there are children who sweep because the floors need sweeping and Mother's tired. And there is an abyss between them far deeper than the abyss that separates us from Blue.”
― Gene Wolfe, Return to the Whorl

“You are still very young. When you are older, perhaps you will come to understand that of all the emotions-and indifference, too, because even indifference is an emotion of a sort-only love sees the unveiled truth.”
― Gene Wolfe, Return to the Whorl