Genius is an infinite capacity for pain.

Creativeness is finding patterns where none exist.

Let me tell you about the end of the world. It happened fifty years ago. Maybe a hundred. And since then it's been lovely. I mean it. Nobody tries to bother you. You can relax. You know what? I like the end of the world.

Science Fiction is a branch of children's literature.

Sometimes the whole world is mud luscious and puddle wonderful.

Sameness is what marketers want us to want.

But the toaster was quite satisfied with itself, thank you. Though it knew from magazines that there were toasters who could toast four slices at a time, it didn't think that the master, who lived alone and seemed to have few friends, would have wanted a toaster of such institutional proportions. With toast, it's quality that matters, not quantity.

Gene Wolfe has produced a work of art that can satisfy adult appetites and in which even the most fantastical elements register as poetry rather than as penny-whistle whimsy.

But before any of the small appliances who may be listening to this tale should begin to think that they might do the same thing, let them be warned: ELECTRICITY IS VERY DANGEROUS. Never play with old batteries! Never put your plug in a strange socket! And if you are in any doubt about the voltage of the current where you are living, ask a major appliance.

He thought proudly that many people in his position could not have adjusted, would have gone mad.

Of course, he was descending.…

But he was still sane. He had chosen his course and now he was following it.

In any case, muffins that are only imaginary aren't liable to get stuck.

Poets are regarded as handicapped writers whose work must be treated with a tender condescension, such as one accords the athletic achievements of basketball players confined to wheelchairs.

The very highest thoughts, pierced with this dread, plummet to earth, snapping the branches of trees.
The hunter comes upon it, not quite, it is not quite dead. A wing lifts, goes limp, and lifts again. Not quite, not quite dead.

Laughter is just a slowed down scream of terror.

Here was a flower (the daisy reflected) strangely like itself and yet utterly unlike itself too. Such a paradox has often been the basis for the most impassioned love.

Sanity, however, was so integral to his character that neither hysteria nor horror could long have their way with him.

America is a nation of liars, and for that reason science fiction has a special claim to be our national literature, as the art form best adapted to telling the lies we like to hear and to pretend we believe.

He (and anyone else who survived) learned to be as unscrupulous as the heroes in the pulp adventure magazines he'd read as a boy -- sometimes, as unscrupulous as the villains.

Though opposition is a hopeless task, acquiescence would be worse.

For a lot of people, poetry tends to be dull. It's not read much. It takes a special kind of training and a lot of practice to read poetry with pleasure. It's like learning to like asparagus.