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Andrew Said You Were The Best Person He Ever Knew." "he Reached That Conclusion Before He Saw Me Raise Three Barbarian Children To Adulthood. I Understand Your Mother Has Six." "right." "and You're The Oldest." "yes." "that's Too Bad. Parents Always Make Their Worst Mistakes With The Oldest Children. That's When Parents Know The Least And Care The Most, So They're More Likely To Be Wrong And Also More Likely To Insist That They're Right.

-Orson Scott Card

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Andrew Said You Were

Orson Scott Card

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Andrew Said You Were The Best Person He Ever Knew." "he Reached That Conclusion Before He Saw Me Raise Three Barbarian Children To Adulthood. I Understand Your Mother Has Six." "right." "and You're The Oldest." "yes." "that's Too Bad. Parents Always Make Their Worst Mistakes With The Oldest Children. That's When Parents Know The Least And Care The Most, So They're More Likely To Be Wrong And Also More Likely To Insist That They're Right.

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Like Running The Hurdles. Work So Hard, Jump Over Every One, Fast, High Enough But No Higher, Because You Can't Afford To Hang In The Air. And Then, When The Race Is Over, You're Dripping With Sweat, Either They Beat You Or You Beat Them ... And Then A Couple Of Guys Come Out And Move The Hurdles Out Of The Way. Turns Out They Were Nothing. All That Work To Jump Over Them, But Now They're Gone.

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The Worst Thing About The Fantasies Of The Mentally Ill Is That They're So Damned Consistent. They Never Let Up. They Never Give You Any Rest.

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Dona Crista Laughed A Bit. "oh, Pip, I'd Be Glad For You To Try. But Do Believe Me, My Dear Friend, Touching Her Heart Is Like Bathing In Ice." I Imagine. I Imagine It Feels Like Bathing In Ice To The Person Touching Her. But How Does It Feel To Her? Cold As She Is, It Must Surely Burn Like Fire.

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We're Like The Wicked Witch. We Promise Gingerbread, Then Eat The Little Brats Alive.

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An Eye For An Eye? How Christian Of You.' Unbelievers Always Want Other People To Act Like Christians.

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No Human Being, When You Understand His Desires, Is Worthless. No One's Life Is Nothing. Even The Most Evil Of Men And Women, If You Understand Their Hearts, Had Some Generous Act That Redeems Them, At Least A Little, From Their Sins.

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Since When Do You Have To Tell The Enemy When He Has Won?

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He Kissed Her And Killed Her Then Dumped Her Body In The River.

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You’re Not A Human Being Until You Value Something More Than The Life Of Your Body. And The Greater The Thing You Live And Die For The Greater You Are.

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Sometimes You Have To Trust People Enough To Let Them Succeed And Love Them Enough To Let Them Fail.

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It's The Teachers, They're The Enemy. They Get Us To Fight Each Other, To Hate Each Other.

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Withholding A Decision Is A Decision.

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Let Me Be Loved Like That, By A Man Who Will Not Replace Me With Concubines When I'm Old And Ugly. Let Me Be Loved By A Man Who Loves God More Than Me.

From All Wise Men, O Lord, Protect Us.

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Even The Most Introverted Person Alive Is Constantly Hungry For Human Association

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If He Was A Good Man, How Could He Leave Me? So He Must Not Be A Good Man. But If He Isn't Good, Then Why Does It Hurt So Much To Lose Him?

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He Walked Down The Corridor, Lined With His Soldiers, Who Looked At Him With Love, With Awe, With Trust. Except Bean, Who Looked At Him With Anguish. Ender Wiggin Was Not Larger Than Life, Bean Knew. He Was Exactly Life-sized, And So His Larger-than-life Burden Was Too Much For Him. And Yet He Was Bearing It. So Far.

Larger Than Life

Whenever The Law Gets Its Hands On You, Those Who Use The Law To Their Own Advantage Will Also Turn It Against You. Don't Put Your Trust In The Laws Of Men, Alvin. They Were Designed By Strong Men To Improve Their Power Over Weaker Ones.

A Weak King Must Be What Other Kings Have Been; A Strong King Is Himself, And From Then On The Meaning Of The Name Of King Is Changed.

But Whether There's Some Grand Design Really Matters Little To Me. My Only Hope Was This: To See What Might Be, To Believe That It Should Be, And Then To Do All I Could To Bring It To Pass, Whatever The Cost.

I Need You To Be Clever, Bean. I Need You To Think Of Solutions To Problems We Haven't Seen Yet. I Want You To Try Things That No One Has Ever Tried Because They're Absolutely Stupid.

It Is A Weak Man Who Blames His Failures On The Strength Of Others.

Science Fiction Is About What Could Be But Isn't; Fantasy Is About What Couldn't Be.

Science Fiction

When I Write Fiction, I Create Characters Whose Views Are Not My Own, And I Allow Them To Be Eloquent In Defense Of Their, Not My, Views.

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If You Give Orders And Explain Nothing, You Might Get Obedience, But You'll Get No Creativity. If You Tell Them Your Purpose, Then When Your Original Plan Is Shown To Be Faulty, They'll Find Another Way To Achieve Your Goal. Explaining To Your Men Doesn't Weaken Their Respect For You, It Proves Your Respect For Them.

Firequencher Raised His Hand. "i've Been Staying Out Of Family Conversations. Do I Get Credit For That?

That's How It Goes Within A Family. You Think You Know Each Other So Well, And So You Don't Bother Hardly Getting To Know Each Other At All.

Human Beings Are Free Except When Humanity Needs Them. Maybe Humanity Needs You. To Do Something. Maybe Humanity Needs Me—to Find Out What You're Good For. We Might Both Do Despicable Things, Ender, But If Humankind Survives, Then We Were Good Tools.

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Sometimes Happiness Consists Of Finding The Right Balance Of Misery.

Once You Have The Gallows, You'll Find New Reasons To Hang People From It.

For It Is In The Millions Of Small Melodies That The Truth Of History Is Always Found, For History Only Matters Because Of The Effects We See Or Imagine In The Lives Of The Ordinary People Who Are Caught Up In, Or Give Shape To, The Great Events.

Perhaps I'm Hiding From Myself. Perhaps I Don't Want To Be What I'm Supposed To Be. Or Perhaps I Don't Want To Keep Living The Life I Already Started To Live.

In All My Study Of History, I Have Never Found A Time Or Place I Would Rather Have Lived Than Now.

Ho Said, 'i Do Not Grieve Because My Feet Have Been Cut Off. I Grieve Because A Precious Jewel Is Dubbed A Mere Stone, And A Man Of Integrity Is Called A Deceiver. This Is Why I Weep.'

Love Is Finding That The Things You Like Best About Yourself Are Not In You At All, But In The Person Who Completes You

Things You Like

Then You're Dead, Too, Sweet Little Sister.' Oh, Yes,' Said Valentine. 'they'll Believe That. "i Didn't Know It Would Kill Andrew. And When He Was Dead, I Didn't Know It Will Kill Valentine Too.

What A Laugh, Though. To Think That One Human Being Could Ever Really Know Another. You Could Get Used To Each Other, Get So Habituated That You Could Speak Their Words Right Along With Them, But You Never Know Why Other People Said What They Said Or Did What They Did, Because They Never Even Know Themselves. Nobody Understands Anybody.

No Matter How Sexually Attracted A Man Might Be Toward Other Men, Or A Woman Toward Other Women, And No Matter How Close The Bonds Of Affection And Friendship Might Be Within Same-sex Couples, There Is No Act Of Court Or Congress That Can Make These Relationships The Same As The Coupling Between A Man And A Woman.

It Is The Downfall Of Evil, That It Never Sees Far Enough Ahead.

Your Dream Is A Good One. [. . .] The Desire That Is The Very Root Of Life Itself: To Grow Until All The Space You Can See Is Part Of You, Under Your Control. It's The Desire For Greatness.

Doesn't It Make You Wonder About Your Own Sexual Identity, Not To Mention Your Sanity, That The Two Women You Love Are, Respectively, A Virtual Woman Existing Only In The Transient Ansible Connections Between Computers And A Woman Whose Soul Is In Fact That Of A Man Who Is The Husband Of Your Mother?

Fiction, Because It Is Not About Somebody Who Actually Lived In The Real World, Always Has The Possibility Of Being About Oneself.

A Library Is The First Step Of A Thousand Journeys, Portal To A Thousand Worlds.

The Only People Who Ever Prize Purity Of Ignorance Are Those Who Profit From A Monopoly On Knowledge.

None Of Us Could Be Happy For Long, Doing Nothing.

If Anyone Have Intercourse With A Pig Or A Dog, He Shall Die. If A Man Have Intercourse With A Horse Or A Mule, There Is No Punishment. But He Shall Not Approach The King, And Shall Not Become A Priest... If A Pig Spring Upon A Man For Intercourse, There Is No Punishment.

This Is What Historians Usually Do, Quibble About Cause And Effect When The Point Is, There Are Times When The World Is In Flux And The Right Voice In The Right Place Can Move The World. Thomas Paine And Ben Franklin, For Instance. Bismark. Lenin.

He Is Dangerous, He Is Beautiful, I Could Drown In His Understanding.

Poke Gave Him Life. Ender Gave It Meaning.

A Man Always Assumes That Others Are As Virtuous As Himself

We Don't Read Novels To Have An Experience Like Life. Heck, We're Living Lives, Complete With All The Incompleteness. We Turn To Fiction To Have An Author Assure Us That It Means Something.

Oops, I Thought. Oops Is An All-purpose Word Standing For Every Bit Of Profanity, Blasphemy, And Pornographic And Scatological Execration I Could Think Of.

The Best Thing About My Job, Though, Is Stopping At The End Of The Day And Rejoining The Human Universe.

The End Of The Day

The Story Itself, The True Story, Is The One That The Audience Members Create In Their Minds, Guided And Shaped By My Text, But Then Transformed, Elucidated, Expanded, Edited, And Clarified By Their Own Experience, Their Own Desires, Their Own Hopes And Fears.

Where Do You Draw The Line Between A Humble Man Who Knows His Own Weaknesses But Tries To Act Out Virtues He Hasn't Quite Mastered Yet, And A Proud Man Who Pretends To Have Those Virtues Without The Slightest Intention Of Acquiring Them?

America's Intellectual Community Has Never Been Very Bright. Or Honest. They're All Sheep, Following Whatever The Intellectual Fashion Of The Decade Happens To Be. Demanding That Everyone Follow Their Dicta In Lockstep. Everyone Has To Be Open-minded And Tolerant Of The Things They Believe, But God Forbid They Should Ever Concede, Even For A Moment, That Someone Who Disagrees With Them Might Have Some Fingerhold Of Truth.

I've Learned Much, Father, And This Above All: That No Station In Life Is Above Any Other, If It's Occupied By Someone With A Good Heart.

Quing-jao: I Am A Slave To The Gods, And I Rejoice In It. Jane: A Slave Who Rejoices Is A Slave Indeed.

Writer’s Block Is My Unconscious Mind Telling Me That Something I’ve Just Written Is Either Unbelievable Or Unimportant To Me, And I Solve It By Going Back And Reinventing Some Part Of What I’ve Already Written So That When I Write It Again, It Is Believable And Interesting To Me. Then I Can Go On. Writer’s Block Is Never Solved By Forcing Oneself To “write Through It,” Because You Haven’t Solved The Problem That Caused Your Unconscious Mind To Rebel Against The Story, So It Still Won’t Work – For You Or For The Reader.

I Learned To Separate The Story From The Writing, Probably The Most Important Thing That Any Storyteller Has To Learn-that There Are A Thousand Right Ways To Tell A Story, And Ten Million Wrong Ones, And You're A Lot More Likely To Find One Of The Latter Than The Former Your First Time Through The Tale.

How Short Life Is For Fools.

How Short Life Is

People Above You, They Never Want To Share Power With You. Why You Look To Them? They Give You Nothing. People Below You, You Give Them Hope, You Give Them Respect, They Give You Power, Cause They Don't Think They Have Any, So They Don't Mind Giving It Up.

You Want To Beat Peter?" She Asked "no," He Answered "beat The Buggers. Then Come Home And See Who Notices Peter Wiggen Anymore. Look Him In The Eye When All The World Loves And Reveres You. That'll Be Defeat In His Eyes, Ender, Thats How You Win" "you Don't Understand" He Said "yes I Do" "no You Don't. I Don't Want To Beat Peter" "then What Do You Want?" "i Want Him To Love Me

We Thought We Were The Only Thinking Beings In The Universe, Until We Met You, But Never Did We Dream That Thought Could Arise From The Lonely Animals Who Cannot Dream Each Other's Dreams

...you Believe That The Kind Of Story You Want To Tell Might Be Best Received By The Science Fiction And Fantasy Audience. I Hope You're Right, Because In Many Ways This Is The Best Audience In The World To Write For. They're Open-minded And Intelligent. They Want To Think As Well As Feel, Understand As Well As Dream. Above All, They Want To Be Led Into Places That No One Has Ever Visited Before. It's A Privilege To Tell Stories To These Readers, And An Honour When They Applaud The Tale You Tell.

I Say This As A Democrat, For Whom The Republican Domination Of Government Threatens Many Values That I Hold To Be Important To America's Role As A Light Among Nations. But There Are No Values That Matter To Me That Will Not Be Gravely Endangered If We Lose This War.

Welcome To The Human Race. Nobody Controls His Own Life, Ender. The Best You Can Do Is Choose To Fill The Roles Given You By Good People, By People Who Love You.

So You Love Me," Said Petra Softly When The Kiss Ended. I'm A Raging Mass Of Hormones Thet I'm Too Young To Understand," Said Bean. "you're A Female Of A Closely Related Species. According To All The Best Primatologists, I Really Have No Choice." That's Nice," She Said.

That's The Problem With Winning Right From The Start, Thought Ender. You Lose Friends.

I Have Hope For You, If Only Because You're The Only One Left To Hope For.

The Univers Is Statistically More Likely To Be Ironic Than Not.

If I Wanted To Doubt, Then I Could Doubt Endlessly, But At Some Point A Person Has To Stop Questioning And Act, And At That Point You Have To Trust Something To Be True. You Have To Act As If Something Is True, And So You Choose The Thing You Have The Most Reason To Believe In, You Have To Live In The World That You Have The Most Hope In.

To Expect Wickedness From Human Beings Is The Best Way I Know Of To Avoid Surprises. And When I Am Surprised, It's Always Pleasantly.

Ender Wiggin Must Believe That No Matter What Happens, No Adult Will Ever, Ever Step In To Help Him In Any Way.

Changing The World Is Good For Those Who Want Their Names In Books. But Being Happy, That Is For Those Who Write Their Names In The Lives Of Others, And Hold The Hearts Of Others As The Treasure Most Dear.

The Commercial Work Of Today Is The Classics Of Tomorrow.

A Character Is What He Does, Yes - But Even More, A Character Is What He Means To Do.

Most Victories Came From Instantly Exploiting Your Enemy's Stupid Mistakes, And Not From Any Particular Brilliance In Your Own Plan.

Everybody Walks Past A Thousand Story Ideas Every Day.

And Enough For Me That When My Hand Touched Your Shoulder, You Leaned On Me; And When You Felt Me Slip Away, You Called My Name.

She Likes Us,” Said Umbo. “i Know, I Could Feel It Too,” Said Rigg. “she’s Really Glad To Have Us Here. I Think She Loves Us Like Her Own Children.” “whom She Murdered And Cut Up Into The Stew.” “they Were Delicious.

But I Fear That I Also Underestimate The Stupidity Of The Rest Of Mankind. Are We Absolutely Sure That We Ought To Win This War?

In A Way, Being A Mormon Prepares You To Deal With Science Fiction, Because We Live Simultaneously In Two Very Different Cultures. The Result Is That We All Know What It's Like To Be Strangers In A Strange Land. It's Not Just A Coincidence That There Are So Many Effective Mormon Science Fiction Writers. We Don't Regard Being An Alien As An Alien Experience. But It Also Means That We're Not Surprised When People Don't Understand What We're Saying Or What We Think.

The Only Teacher That's Worth Anything To You Is Your Enemy.

And If You're Going To Criticize Me For Not Finishing The Whole Thing And Tying It Up In A Bow For You, Why, Do Us Both A Favor And Write Your Own Damn Book, Only Have The Decency To Call It A Romance Instead Of A History, Because History's Got No Bows On It, Only Frayed Ends Of Ribbons And Knots That Can't Be Untied. It Ain't A Pretty Package, But Then It's Not Your Birthday That I Know Of So I'm Under No Obligation To Give You A Gift.

The Difference Between Science Fiction And Fantasy … Is Simply This: Science Fiction Has Rivets And Fantasy Has Trees.

Of Course, I Also Hear From Critics Who Detest What I Do, And While Sometimes I Feel Rather Proud Of Having Made Various The Loathsome People Or Groups Angry, At Other Times I Wonder Why I Put Up With Such Grief.

Just Because You Believe It Doesn't Make It So.

Whoop-de-do," Said Ram. "what?" "i'm Celebrating." "was That Irony Or Loss Of Mental Function?" Asked The Expendable. "was That A Rhetorical Questions, A Bit Of Humor, Or A Sign That You Are Losing Confidence In Me?" "i Have No Confidence In You, Ram," Said The Expendable. "well, Thanks." "you're Welcome.

And Above All, What Does Being Liberal Have To Do With Opposing, Or, Uh, Supporting The War Against Terror? Our Enemies In The War Against Terror Are So Anti-liberal That You Would Think It Would Be Liberals Leaping To Protect The World From These Monstrous Ideologies.

Sometimes Good People Have To Do Terrible Things.

Death Is Not A Tragedy To The One Who Dies; To Have Wasted The Life Before That Death, That Is The Tragedy.

There Is No Society That Does Not Highly Value Fictional Storytelling. Ever.

It Was Just Him And Me. He Fought With Honor. If It Weren't For His Honor, He And The Others Would Have Beaten Me Together. They Might Have Killed Me, Then. His Sense Of Honor Saved My Life. I Didn't Fight With Honor . . . I Fought To Win.

The Only Process You've Mastered Is The Process Of Elimination, And The Only Reason You've Mastered That Is Because You Can Do It In The Toilet.

The Lies We Live Will Always Be Confessed In The Stories That We Tell.

One Mind Can Think Only Of Its Own Questions; It Rarely Surprises Itself.

I Doubt That America Will Come To Europe Again. You'll Be On Your Own Against Militant Islam.

When You Have Faith In Something A Lot Of Other People Believe Then You A Member Of The Church" Said Ceas, "when You Have Faith In Something Nobody Believes, Then You A Complete Wacko

If Human Beings Are All Monsters, Why Should I Sacrifice Anything For Them?" "because They Are Beautiful Monsters..., And When They Live In A Network Of Peace And Hope, When They Trust The World And Their Deepest Hungers Are Fulfilled, Then Within That System, That Delicate Web, There Is Joy. That Is What We Live For, To Bind The Monsters Together, To Murder Their Fear And Give Birth To Their Beauty.

His Vices Were The Vices Of His Time And Culture, But His Virtues Transcended The Milieu Of His Life.

Soldiers Can Sometimes Make Decisions That Are Smarter Than The Orders They've Been Given.

Surely You're Not Saying That God Had To Choose Between Long Life And Intelligence For Human Beings! It's There In Your Own Bible, Carlotta. Two Trees - Knowledge And Life. You Eat Of The Tree Of Knowledge And You Will Surely Die. You Eat Of The Tree Of Life And You Remain A Child In The Garden Forever, Undying.

But In The Meantime I Became Accustomed To The Writing Life And It Would Be Hard To Change Now - Partly Because Of The Salary Cut If I Went To My Other Love, Teaching; And Partly Because I Still Have Stories To Tell, Even Though It Isn't All That Fun Doing The Work Anymore.

I've Had Your Tears With Mine, And You've Had Mine With Yours. I Think That's More Intimate Even Than A Kiss.

Nobody Ever Completely Means What They Say. Even When They Think They're Telling The Truth, There's Always Something Hidden Behind Their Words.

Telling The Truth

A Duel Is Just Two Murders Who Agree To Take Turns Trying To Kill Each Other.

The Difference Between Raman And Varelse Is Not In The Creature Judged, But In The Creature Judging. When We Declare An Alien Species To Be Raman, It Does Not Mean That They Have Passed A Threshold Of Moral Maturity. It Means That We Have.

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