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Perhaps You Don't Desire Poetry As Much As You Would Like To Have My Torchy Knowledge Of Your Possible Futures, But I Dare Say Poetry Will Do You Far More Good. For Knowing The Future Only Makes You Timid And Complacent By Turns, While Poetry Can Shape You Into The Kind Of Souls Who Can Face Any Future With Boldness And Wisdom And Nobility, So That You Need Not Know The Future At All, So That Any Future Will Be An Opportunity For Greatness, If You Have Greatness In You.

-Orson Scott Card

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Perhaps You Don't Desire

Orson Scott Card

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Perhaps You Don't Desire Poetry As Much As You Would Like To Have My Torchy Knowledge Of Your Possible Futures, But I Dare Say Poetry Will Do You Far More Good. For Knowing The Future Only Makes You Timid And Complacent By Turns, While Poetry Can Shape You Into The Kind Of Souls Who Can Face Any Future With Boldness And Wisdom And Nobility, So That You Need Not Know The Future At All, So That Any Future Will Be An Opportunity For Greatness, If You Have Greatness In You.

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You Spend Your Whole Life Grieving For Those Who Haven't Died Yet.

Miro, I'm So Sorry. I Always Felt Such Pity For You Humans Because You Could Only Think Of One Thing At A Time And Your Memories Were So Imperfect And . . . Now I Realize That Just Getting Through The Day Without Killing Somebody Can Be An Achievement." It Gets To Be A Habit. Most Of Us Manage To Keep Our Body Count Quite Low. It's The Neighborly Way To Live.

The Most Evil Creatures Dont Desire The Destruction Of Everythingthey Only Desire To Exploit It For Themselves.

You Accomplish Exactly As Much As The People Who Serve You Decide You'll Accomplish And Nothing More.

Darkness Bound Them Closer Than Light.

I Am Especially Grateful, However, To Have Known The Fifties, Before We Began To Poison Our Own Civilization - Or At Least Before The Effects Of The Poison Began To Be Felt.

My Favourite All-time Work Of Fiction: Lord Of The Rings. My Favourite All-time Nonfiction Book: Guns, Germs, And Steel. Ask Me Again Next Week, You'll Get A Different Answer.

I Hope I Am Remembered By My Children As A Good Father.

Home Is Where The People Who Live There Need Me To Come Home To Them, And Worry About Me When I'm Gone. There's No Such Place On This Earth, No Matter How Far I Drive.

Evil People Naturally Assume That You Will Use That Power Exactly As They Would Use It.

We Need A Napoleon. An Alexander. Except That Napoleon Lost In The End, And Alexander Flamed Out And Died Young. We Need A Julius Caesar, Except That He Made Himself A Dictator, And Died For It.

When Have You Ever Seen Someone Who Had No Doubts Who Was Also Correct About Anything?

I Don't Care How Much You Eat, Ender, Self-cannibalism Won't Get You Out Of This School.

A Regime That Wraps Itself In The Flag Of Truth Fears Truth Most Of All, For If Its Story Is Falsified To The Slightest Degree, Its Authority Is Gone.

I Think It's Impossible To Really Understand Somebody, What They Want, What They Believe, And Not Love Them The Way They Love Themselves.

We Have To Go. I'm Almost Happy Here.

Civilisation Is Only A Pretense. In Crisis We Have Become Mere Apes Again, Forgetting The Rational Biped Of Our Pretensions And Instead Becoming The Hairy Primate At The Mouth Of The Cave, Screeching At The Enemy Wishing It Would Go Away, Fingering The Heavy Stone We Will Use The Moment It Comes Close Enough

The Only True Vision Comes Not From God But From The Inmost Recesses Of The Human Mind.

I Love You Ender. More Than Ever. No Matter What You Decide.

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

The Priests Say That God Created Our Souls, And That Just Puts Us Under The Control Of Another Puppeteer. If God Created Our Will, Then He's Responsible For Every Choice We Make.

If You Listen Very Carefully, You Can Hear The Good Fairy Come In The Night And Leave Our Assignment For Tomorrow.

I Taught You Everything You Know. But I Didn't Teach You Everything I Know.

When You Walk On The Face Of A World, Then Forgiveness Comes.

It's Easy To Manipulate Your Children When They're Absolutely Sure You're Stupid.

In A Way She Actually Preferred Peter To Other People Because Of This. He Always Acted Out Of Intelligent Self-interest.

The Most Noble Title Any Child Can Have, Demosthenes Wrote, Is Third.

There Is A Myth That Homosexuals Are 'born That Way,' And We Are Pounded With This Idea So Thoroughly That Many People Think That Somebody, Somewhere, Must Have Proved It.

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?

If You Asked Me To Marry You All Over Again Today I'd Say Yes, Said Valentine. And If I Had Only Met You For The First Time Today, I'd Ask.

The Nations That Offer To Arbitrate Are The Ones That Think They Should Rule The World.

The Maker Is The One Who Is Part Of What He Makes.

When There Aren't Any Smart Decisions, I Suppose You Just Have To Pick The Stupid Decision You Like Best.

I Don't Freeze Up Because It Isn't My Battle. I'm Helping. I'm Watching. But I'm Free. Because It's Ender's Game.

Nobody Ever Wrote To Me Saying"you Know Ender's Game Was A Pretty Good Book, But You Know What It Really Needs A N Introduction!".....so Be Assured The Novel Stands On Its Own, And If You Skip This Intro And Go Straight To The Story, I Not Only Won't Stand In Your Way I'll Even Agree With You!

If You Lay A Hand On Me I'll Ram Your Testicles So Far Up Inside Your Abdomen It'll Take A Heart Surgeon To Get Them Out.

It Is The Essence Of Dignity To Pretend To Desire What You Cannot Prevent.

Ethan Wyeth: I Hope You're Thirsty." Gideon Wyeth:"why?" Ethan: "cause Your Dumb And Ugly, But I Can Do Something About Thirsty.

There's A Sort Of Rage A Man Feels When He's Been Deceived Where He Most Trusted. It Compares To No Other Anger.

How Long Before Married People Answer The Dictators Thus: Regardless Of Law, Marriage Has Only One Definition, And Any Government That Attempts To Change It Is My Mortal Enemy. I Will Act To Destroy That Government And Bring It Down, So It Can Be Replaced With A Government That Will Respect And Support Marriage, And Help Me Raise My Children In A Society Where They Will Expect To Marry In Their Turn.

The Seed Of Doubt Was There, And It Stayed, And Every Now And Then Sent Out A Little Root. It Changed Everything, To Have That Seed Growing. It Made Ender Listen More Carefully To What People Meant, Instead Of What They Said. It Made Him Wise.

No Book, However Good, Can Survive A Hostile Reading.

If Words Can Be Lethal Weapons, I Must Provide Them With An Arsenal.

Make Friends. Be A Leader. Kiss Butts If You Have To, But If The Other Guys Despise You-you Know What I Mean?

A Lot Of Human Behavior Was Really Acting Out Our Responses To Dangers Long Past.

Humanity Does Not Ask Us To Be Happy. It Merely Asks Us To Be Brilliant On Its Behalf.

When You Hear A True Story, There Is A Part Of You That Responds To It Regardless Of Art, Regardless Of Evidence. Let It Be The Most Obvious Fabrication And You Will Still Believe Whatever Truth Is In It, Because You Can Not Deny Truth No Matter How Shabbily It Is Dressed.

The Old Tale Of Sleeping Beauty Might End Happily In French Or English, But He Was In Russia, And Only A Fool Would Want To Live Through The Russian Version Of Any Fairy Tale.

I Always Tell What I Believe. Whether It's True, I'm No More Sure Than Any Man.

I'm Putting You In Dink Meeker's Toon. From Now On, As Far As You're Concerned, Dink Meeker Is God." "then Who Are You?" "the Personnel Officer Who Hired God.

Oh, I'll Live Ender's Life, Too. It's So Much More Interesting Than My Own." ~val

The Wise Are Not Wise Because They Make No Mistakes. They Are Wise Because They Correct Their Mistakes As Soon As They Recognize Them.

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

The First Of A Thousand Lies. Truth Flowed To Micah Quill, Was Sucked In And Disappeared, And Emerged Again Looking Ever So Much Like It Used To, But Changed Subtly, At The Edges, Where None Would Notice, So That Simple Truth Became A Complicated Fabric Indeed, One That Could Wrap You Up So Tightly And Close You Off From The Air Until You Suffocated In It.

I Will Never Hurt You. I Will Always Help You. If You Are Hungry Ill Give You My Food. If You Are Frightened I Am Your Friend. I Love You Now. And Love Does Not End.

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.

It Was All Your Genes That Made Us Geniuses, Mom. Said Peter. We Sure Didn't Get Any From Dad. I Heard That. Father Said, Not Looking Up From The News That Was Being Displayed On The Table While He Ate It Would've Been Wasted If You Hadn't

Ender's Game Is Set More Than A Century In The Future And Has Nothing To Do With Political Issues That Did Not Exist When The Book Was Written In 1984... It Will Be Interesting To See Whether The Victorious Proponents Of Gay Marriage Will Show Tolerance Toward Those Who Disagreed With Them When The Issue Was Still In Dispute.

A Man Who Can't Read Only Knows What Other Folks Tell Him.

Bean Could See The Hunger In Their Eyes. Not The Regular Hunger, For Food, But The Real Hunger, The Deep Hunger, For Family, For Love, For Belonging.

Do Not Shout At Me, Mr. Quill," Said John [adams]. "justice May Be Blind, But She Is Not Deaf.

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.

The Story Is One That You And I Will Construct Together In Your Memory. If The Story Means Anything To You At All, Then When You Remember It Afterward, Think Of It, Not As Something I Created, But Rather As Something That We Made Together.

Poke Gave Him Life. Ender Gave It Meaning.

How Short Life Is For Fools.

How Short Life Is

If You Read To Your Kids You'll Make Readers Out Of Them, Partly Because They'll Associate Reading With Good Parent Time.

Your Work Is First, Learning Is First, Winning Is Everything Because Without It There Is Nothing.

This Emotion I'm Feeling Now, This Is Love, Right?

I Think That Most Of Us, Anyway, Read These Stories That We Know Are Not "true" Because We're Hungry For Another Kind Of Truth: The Mythic Truth About Human Nature In General, The Particular Truth About Those Life-communities That Define Our Own Identity, And The Most Specific Truth Of All: Our Own Self-story. Fiction, Because It Is Not About Someone Who Lived In The Real World, Always Has The Possibility Of Being About Oneself. --from The Introduction

That Is The Ultimate Power, To Stare Death In The Face And Be Unafraid.

Good People Aren't Good Because They Never Cause Harm To Others. They're Good Because They Treat Others The Best Way They Know How, With The Understanding That They Have.

The Buggers Have Finally, Finally Learned That We Humans Value Each And Every Individual Human Life. But They've Learned This Lesson Just In Time For It To Be Hopelessly Wrong — For We Humans Do, When The Cause Is Sufficient, Spend Our Own Lives. We Throw Ourselves Onto The Grenade To Save Our Buddies In The Foxhole. We Rise Out Of The Trenches And Charge The Entrenched Enemy And Die Like Maggots Under A Blowtorch. We Strap Bombs On Our Bodies And Blow Ourselves Up In The Midst Of Our Enemies. We Are, When The Cause Is Sufficient, Insane.

The Dreamers Always Seem To Think Their Dream Is Worth The Price That Other People Will Pay. They Also Delude Themselves That They Will Control Whatever Evil They Use To Try To Bring About Their Dream.

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.

Maybe That's All Demons Ever Are. People Like Us, Doing Things Without Even Knowing What We're Doing.

Early To Bed And Early To Rise," Mazer Intoned, "makes A Man Stupid And Blind In The Eyes.

From Now On The Enemy Is More Clever Than You. From Now On The Enemy Is Stronger Than You. From Now On You Are Always About To Lose.

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

Individual Human Beings Are All Tools, That The Others Use To Help Us All Survive.” “that’s A Lie.” “no. It’s Just A Half Truth. You Can Worry About The Other Half After We Win This War.

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.

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

If Only We Were Wiser Or Better People, Perhaps The Gods Would Explain To Us The Mad, Unbearable Things They Do.

I Will Love You Forever, He Thought. I Am Lying, He Thought, And This Time He Was Right

She Remembered The Story From Her Childhood, About Adam And Eve In The Garden, And The Talking Snake. Even As A Little Girl She Had Said - To The Consternation Of Her Family - What Kind Of Idiot Was Eve, To Believe A Snake? But Now She Understood, For She Had Heard The Voice Of The Snake And Had Watched As A Wise And Powerful Man Had Fallen Under Its Spell. Eat The Fruit And You Can Have The Desires Of Your Heart. It's Not Evil, It's Noble And Good. You'll Be Praised For It. And It's Delicious.

Love Is Random; Fear Is Inevitable.

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

Science Fiction

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

I Also Remembered That You Were Beautiful." "memory Does Play Tricks On Us." "no. Your Face Is The Same, But I Don't Remember What Beautiful Means Anymore.

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

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

I've Lived Too Long With Pain. I Won't Know Who I Am Without It

Perhaps You Don't Desire Poetry As Much As You Would Like To Have My Torchy Knowledge Of Your Possible Futures, But I Dare Say Poetry Will Do You Far More Good. For Knowing The Future Only Makes You Timid And Complacent By Turns, While Poetry Can Shape You Into The Kind Of Souls Who Can Face Any Future With Boldness And Wisdom And Nobility, So That You Need Not Know The Future At All, So That Any Future Will Be An Opportunity For Greatness, If You Have Greatness In You.

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.

I Think Santa Claus Is, By And Large, Quite Beneficial, For When The Child Is Finally Allowed -- Or Forced -- To Recognize The Nonexistence Of Santa Claus, Then The Child Is Able To Go Through The Vital Intellectual Process Of Reconstructing Reality In Light Of New Evidence, Complete With Back-forming New Stories To Account For Past Events. This Prepares The Child For Many Other Disillusionments And Gives Her Vital And Well-supported Experience In Maintaining Her Grip On Reality Independent Of The Stories Told To Her At Any Given Time.

Personal Affection Is A Luxury You Can Have Only After All Your Enemies Are Eliminated. Until Then, Everyone You Love Is A Hostage, Sapping Your Courage And Corrupting Your Judgment.

The Ways Of Love Are Strange And Hard: The Love You Want Is Always Barred; The Love You Have You Want To Change. The Ways Of Love Are Hard And Strange.

Nature Can't Evolve A Species That Hasn't The Will To Survive. Individuals Might Be Bred To Sacrifice Themselves, But The Race As A Whole Can Never Cease To Exist.

Will To Survive

I Have To Win This Now, And For All Time, Or I’ll Fight It Every Day And It Will Get Worse And Worse.

In Order To Learn, One Must Change One's Mind.

I Always Tell The Truth About What I’m Selling, And Then Nobody Buys It.

Telling The Truth

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

In The Moment When I Truly Understand My Enemy, Understand Him Well Enough To Defeat Him, Then In That Very Moment I Also Love Him. I Think It’s Impossible To Really Understand Somebody, What They Want, What They Believe, And Not Love Them The Way They Love Themselves. And Then, In That Very Moment When I Love Them.... I Destroy Them.

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

My Hands Are Clean, But Not Because I Wasn't Prepared To Bloody Them.

He Would Always Speak The Language Of The Heart With An Awkward Foreign Accent.

Does It Help If We're So Strong-willed, Stubborn, Ambitious, And Selfish That We Always Overcome Everything In Our Way No Matter What?" Asked Wang-mu. "i Think Those Are The Pertinent Virtues, Yes," Said Peter. "then Let's Do It. That's Us In Spades.

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.

It Wasn't So Bad Being A Slave When Your Owner Was Yourself And Stood Up For You.

History Is An Omlette. The Eggs Are Already Broken.

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

With False Names, On The Right Nets, They Could Be Anybody. Old Men, Middle-aged Women, Anybody, As Long As They Were Careful About The Way They Wrote. All That Anyone Would See Were Their Words, Their Ideas. Every Citizen Started Equal, On The Nets.

Religion Is Tied To The Deepest Feelings People Have. The Love That Arises From That Stewing Pot Is The Sweetest And Strongest, But The Hate Is The Hottest, And The Anger Is The Most Violent.

There's A Reason Why Every Human Society Has Fiction. It Teaches Us How To Be 'good,' To Behave In A Way That Is For The Benefit Of The Whole Community.

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.

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.

Perhaps It's Impossible To Wear An Identity Without Becoming What You Pretend To Be.

I Realized That Everything Important In Sci-fi Showed Up In The Magazines First. It's The Proving Ground For New Writers And New Ideas.

I Have Too Many Secrets. For All These Years I've Been A Speaker For The Dead, Uncovering Secrets And Helping People To Live In The Light Of Truth. Now I No Longer Tell Anyone Half Of What I Know, Because If I Told The Whole Truth There Would Be Fear, Hatred, Brutality, Murder, War.

But When It Comes To Human Beings, The Only Type Of Cause That Matters Is Final Cause, The Purpose. What A Person Had In Mind. Once You Understand What People Really Want, You Can't Hate Them Anymore. You Can Fear Them, But You Can't Hate Them, Because You Can Always Find The Same Desires In Your Own Heart.

Once You Duct-tape A Ziploc Bag To A Man's Chest, There's No Going Back.

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.

Apparently The Dutch Now Prided Themselves On Being Better At Queues Than The English, Which Was Absurd, Because Standing Cheerfully In Line Was The English National Sport.

The Most Important Training, Though, Is To Experience Life As A Writer, Questioning Everything, Inventing Multiple Explanations For Everything. If You Do That, All The Other Things Will Come; If You Don't, There's No Hope For You.

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.

Twisted And Perverse Are The Ways Of The Human Mind," Jane Intoned. "pinocchio Was Such A Dolt To Try To Become A Real Boy. He Was Much Better Off With A Wooden Head.

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

Legalizing Gay Marriage Is Not About Making It Possible For Gay People To Become Couples. It's About Giving The Left The Power To Force Anti-religious Values On Our Children. Once They Legalize Gay Marriage, It Will Be The Bludgeon They Use To Make Sure That It Becomes Illegal To Teach Traditional Values In The Schools.

Sister Carlotta, I'm On A Leave Of Absence Right Now. That Means I've Been Sacked, In Case You Don't Understand How The I.f. Handles These Things.” "sacked! A Miscarriage Of Justice. You Ought To Be Shot.

She Will Look At You As Women Look At Men, And She Will Judge You As A Woman Judge Men, Not On The Strength Of Their Arguments, And Not In Their Cleverness Or Prowess In Battle, But Rather On The Force Of Their Character, The Intensity Of Their Passion, Their Strength Of Soul, Their Compassion, And... Ah, This Above All... Their Conversation.

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

Human Beings Do Metamorphose. They Change Their Identity Constantly. However, Each New Identity Thrives On The Delusion That It Was Always In Possession Of The Body It Has Just Conquered.

Americans Love To Pick Up, Move On, Start Over. But Instead Of Being Somebody Fresh And New, They Become Somebody Lonely And Lost, Or, Far Too Often These Days, They Become Nobody At All, A Machine For Satisfying Hunger, Without Loyalty Or Honor Or Duty.

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

As Long As You Keep Getting Born, It's Alright To Die Some Times.

Ulysses, Obviously. It Was An Elaborate Prank, And Our Supposed Intellectual Elite Continue To Fall For It.

Because If You Can’t Kill Then You Are Always Subject To Those Who Can, And Nothing And No One Will Ever Save You.

When Both Parties Are Lying And They Both Know The Other Party's Lying, It Comes Powerful Close To Being The Same Thing As Telling The Truth.

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?

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.

What Am I Now, Alai?" "still Good." "at What?" "at--anything. There's A Million Soldiers Who'd Follow You To The End Of The Universe." "i Don't Want To Go To The End Of The Universe." "so Where Do You Want To Go? They'll Follow You." I Want To Go Home, Thought Ender, But I Don't Know Where It Is.

Your Ego-depletion Seems Problematically Difficult To Assuage.

You Can't Write A Novel All At Once, Any More Than You Can Swallow A Whale In One Gulp. You Do Have To Break It Up Into Smaller Chunks. But Those Smaller Chunks Aren't Good Old Familiar Short Stories. Novels Aren't Built Out Of Short Stories. They Are Built Out Of Scenes.

What A Waste Of Time To Be Posthumously Famous.

The Only Way To Learn Is By Changing Your Mind.

Being Young Is An 18 Year Prison Sentence For A Crime Your Parents Committed. But You Do Get Time Off For Good Behavior.

You Can’t Answer What I Said, So You’re Going To Talk About My Saying It.

Thanks From Keeping Me From Being A Liar," Said Nikolai. "what?" "about Your Having Diarrhea." "for You I'd Get Dysentery." "now That's Friendship.

So Let Me Tell You What I Think About Gods. I Think A Real God Is Not Going To Be So Scared Or Angry That He Tries To Keep Other People Down…a Real God Doesn’t Care About Control. A Real God Already Has Control Of Everything That Needs Controlling. Real Gods Would Want To Teach You How To Be Just Like Them.

Personal Humiliation Was Painful. Humiliation Of One's Family Was Much Worse. Humiliation Of One's Social Status Was Agony To Bear. But Humiliation Of One's Nation Was The Most Excruciating Of Human Miseries.

Sometimes Lies Were More Dependable Than The Truth.

Maybe She Couldn't Know Who She Was Today. Maybe It Was Enough To Know That She Was No Longer Who She Was Before.

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

I Don't Care If I Pass Your Test, I Don't Care If I Follow Your Rules. If You Can Cheat, So Can I. I Won't Let You Beat Me Unfairly - I'll Beat You Unfairly First. - Ender

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.

Nobodys Life Ever Goes According To Plan. So Why Do We Keep On Planning? Because That's How We Know Who We Are. By What We Intend To Be. By What We Try To Become. And Fail. I Don't Say 'fail'. I Saw We Aim And Miss. But We Still Hit Something.

Everybody Dies. What Matters Is What You Do Between Now And When It Happens To You.

You Grow A Whole Lot More As A Writer By Getting Old Stories Out Of The House And Letting New Ones Come In And Live With You Until They Grow Up And Are Ready To Go. Don't Let The Old Ones Stay There And Grow Fat And Cranky And Eat All The Food Out Of The Refrigerator. You Have Dozens Of Generations Of Stories Inside You, But The Only Way To Make Room For The New Ones Is To Write The Old Ones And Mail Them Off.

But The Truth Is That No Person Ever Understands Another, From Beginning To End Of Life, There Is No Truth That Can Be Known, Only The Story We Imagine To Be True, The Story They Really Believe To Be True About Themselves; And All Of Them Lies.

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.

Two Sides Of The Same Coin, But Which Side Is Which?

We Were All Fated To Die, And So It Is Good That At Least We Can Be Sure Our Deaths Today Might Bring About A Good End, Might Make The World A Better Place.

I Don't Know Why People Who Got What They Need To Be Happy Don't Just Go Ahead And Be Happy.

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.

War Was Never So Careful As To Inflict Suffering Only Where It Was Merited.

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

He's Not A Killer. He Just Wins... Thoroughly

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

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.

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'm Not Stupid!" In Bean's Experience, That Was A Sentence Never Uttered Except To Prove Its Own Inaccuracy.

Any Decent Person Who Knows What Warfare Is Can Never Go Into Battle With A Whole Heart.

Grief,she Reminded Herself, Is Almost Always For The Mourner's Loss.

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.

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

Quim," She Said, "don't Ever Try To Teach Me About Good And Evil. I've Been There, And You've Seen Nothing But A Map.

If You Did Not In Your Own Mind Distinguish Between Useful And Erroneous Information, Then You Were Not Learning At All, You Were Merely Replacing Ignorance With False Belief, Which Was No Improvement.

It Is In The Turmoil Of Chaos That We Discover What, If Anything, We Are.

This Is The Speaker For The Dead? Judging Someone By Appearances?" "maybe I've Fallen In Love With Grego." "you've Always Been A Sucker For People Who Pee On You.

What Else Should You Be? Human Beings Didn't Evolve Brains In Order To Lie Around On Lakes. Killing's The First Thing We Learned. And A Good Thing We Did, Or We'd Be Dead, And The Tigers Would Own The Earth.

In Philosophy Class I Think We Finally Decided That 'good' Is An Infinitely Recursive Term - It Can't Be Defined Except In Terms Of Itself. Good Is Good Because It's Better Than Bad, Though Why It's Better To Be Good Than Bad Depends On How You Define Good, And On And On.

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

I Carry The Seeds Of Death Within Me And Plant Them Wherever I Linger Long Enough To Love.

Short Stories Are Designed To Deliver Their Impact In As Few Pages As Possible. A Tremendous Amount Is Left Out, And A Good Short Story Writer Learns To Include Only The Most Essential Information.

If Pigs Could Vote, The Man With The Slop Bucket Would Be Elected Swineherd Every Time, No Matter How Much Slaughtering He Did On The Side.

I Don't Know A Soul Who Doesn't Maintain Two Separate Lists Of Doctrines The Ones That They Believe That They Believe; And The Ones That They Actually Try To Live By.

Where Loyalty Bound Creatures Together, They Became Something Larger, Something New And Whole And Inexplicable.

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

We're All Trying To Decide Whether Your Scores Up There Are A Miracle Or A Mistake." "a Habit.

When You Really Know Someone, You Can't Hate Him.

[t]he Politically Correct Are Above The Rules Of Ordinary Civility, Once They Have Identified You As An Unbeliever In Their Religion.

Metaphors Have A Way Of Holding The Most Truth In The Least Space.

The Only Way To Retrieve A Secret,once Known, Is To Replace It With A Lie.

. . . All These Readers Have Placed Themselves Inside This Story, Not As Spectators, But As Participants, And So Have Looked At The World, Not With My Eyes Only, But Also With Their Own.

He Jumped At The Giants Face, Clambered Up His Lip And Nose, And Began To Dig In The Giant's Eye.

Isn't It Possible, He Wondered, For One Person To Love Another Without Trying To Own Each Other? Or Is That Buried So Deep In Our Genes That We Can Never Get It Out? Territoriality. My Wife. My Friend. My Lover. My Outrageous And Annoying Computer Personality Who's About To Be Shut Off At The Behest Of A Half-crazy Girl With Ocd On A Planet That I Never Heard Of And How Will I Live Without [her] When She's Gone?

I Don't Hate You, I Love You, You're Part Of Myself, You're My Heart And When You Go It's My Heart Torn Out And Carried Away--

All The Stories Are Fictions. What Matters Is Which Fiction You Believe.

Knowing Something May Be A Terrible Burden To Bear, But It Holds No Danger To Them As Aren't Afraid Of Truth.

A Broken Clock Is Right Two Times A Day.

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

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Hector Hugh Munro

Fulton J. Sheen

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