Caldé of the Long Sun Quotes

“That was the way life was, the way death was. A man lived as long as you hated him and died on you as soon as you began to like him.”
― Gene Wolfe, Caldé of the Long Sun

“The pool and the miniature vale that contained it, always dark, grew darker still. Looking up after countless kisses, he saw idling fish of mottled gold and silver, black, white, and red, hanging in air above the goddess’s upraised hand, and for the first time noticed light streaming from a lamp of silver filigree in the branches of a stunted tree. “Where did they go?” he asked.”
― Gene Wolfe, Caldé of the Long Sun

“A dark flask dangled from the bedpost like a ripe fruit.   Someone he could not see was seated beside his bed. He turned his head and craned his neck to no avail. At last he extended a hand toward the visitor; and the visitor took it between his own, which were large and hard and warm. As soon as their hands touched, he knew. You said you weren’t going to help, he told the visitor. You said I wasn’t to expect help from you, yet here you are. The visitor did not reply, but his hands were clean and gentle and full of healing.”
― Gene Wolfe, Caldé of the Long Sun

“Love was the greatest of enchantments; if Echidna and her children succeeded in killing Kypris, Thelxiepeia would no doubt, would doubtless … Become the goddess of love in a century or less, said the Outsider, standing not behind Silk as he had in the ball court, but before him—standing on the still water of the pool, tall and wise and kind, with a face that nearly came into focus. I would claim her in that case, long before the end. As I have so many others. As I am claiming Kypris even now because love always proceeds from me, real love, true love. First romance. The Outsider was the dancing man on a toy, and the water the polished toy-top on which he danced with Kypris, who was Hyacinth and Mother, too. First romance, sang the Outsider with the music box. First romance. It was why he was called the Outsider. He was outside—”
― Gene Wolfe, Caldé of the Long Sun

“Then it would be over. Over and dead and done with, never to live again. He would recall his longing as something that had once occupied an augur whose name chanced to be his, Silk, a name not common but by no means outlandish. (The old caldé, whose bust his mother had kept at the back of her closet, had been—what? Had he been Silk, too? No, Tussah; but tussah was another costly fabric.) He would try to bring peace and to save his manteion, fail at both, and die.”
― Gene Wolfe, Caldé of the Long Sun

“We would be blind, Auk. As blind as I. Because I have never had eyes of my own, I could not look out through yours. But I shall go with you, and guide you, and use your body to heal you, if I can. Look upon me, Auk.” “There’s nothing to see,” Auk protested. But there was: a stammering light so filled with hope and pleasure and wonder that Auk would willingly have seen nothing else, if only he could have watched it forever.”
― Gene Wolfe, Caldé of the Long Sun

“You hated it—hated its nasty ugly ways, its noise and smoke and most of all its shaggy shitty itch for gelt, gelt for this and gelt for that until a man couldn’t fart without paying”
― Gene Wolfe, Caldé of the Long Sun