Gene Wolfe Quotes

Ephemeral should be the default.

Pleasures take to themselves wings and fly away; true knowledge remains forever.

Celebrity was a long time in coming; it will go away. Everything goes away.

I call Washington 'the city of the perishable.'

There's certainly nothing lasting and definite about the theater.

All things are only transitory.

Beauty is a precious trace that eternity causes to appear to us and that it takes away from us. A manifestation of eternity, and a sign of death as well.

I heard the old, old, men say 'all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters.'

The story of life is quicker than the blink of an eye, the story of love is hello, goodbye.

No blessing lasts forever.

Robert, you are just a transient. I have seen them come and I have seen them go and I’ll be here long after you have gone.

Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion.

Nothing very very good and nothing very very bad ever lasts for very very long.

So much of my work has been about disappearing.

I think everything is temporary.

What I do and what I record only work for the moment.

Everything is temporary. Everything is bound to end.

Because in a split second, it's gone.

People still don't appreciate how ephemeral success is.

Beauty is everlasting And dust is for a time.

Time is not kind to everything.

I should never impose an image forever. I like how ephemeral it can be.

The industry's memory is quite short, it's true.

Wind and fortune are not lasting.

The kindly light has a brief period of shining.