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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.

-Orson Scott Card

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The Priests Say That

Orson Scott Card

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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.

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

The Only People Who Think Children Are Carefree Are The Ones Who've Forgotten Their Own Childhood.

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!

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

It Is A Common Trait Of Primates To Become Submissive And Even Worshipful Toward One Who Has The Power To Kill Them.

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

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

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.

Whether He Likes It Or Not, [he] Cannot Remain Incognito Forever. He Has Outraged Too Many Wise Men And Pleased Too Many Fools To Hide Behind His Too-appropriate Order To Assume Leadership Of The Forces Of Stupidity He Has Marshalled, Or His Enemies Will Unmask Him In Order To Better Understand The Disease That Has Produced Such A Warped And Twisted Mind.

I've Watched Through His Eyes, I've Listened Through His Ears, And I Tell You He's The One.

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 If You Caught My Informant,' Said Achilles, 'why In The World Would Chamrajnagar—or Graff, If It Was Him—launch The Shuttle Anyway? Was Catching Me Doing Something Naughty So Important They’d Risk A Shuttle And It’s Crew Just To Catch Me? I Find That Quite… Flattering. Sort Of Like Winning The Nobel Prize For Scariest Villain.

Life Is Full Of Grief, To Exactly The Degree We Allow Ourselves To Love Other People.

The World Was Full Of Locked Doors, And He Had To Get His Hand On Every Key.

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.

Only Stupid Men Trying To Seem Smart Need To Be With Dumb Women. Only Weak Men Trying To Look Strong Are Attracted To Compliant Women.

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.

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.

We Care About Moral Issues, Nobility, Decency, Happiness, Goodness—the Issues That Matter In The Real World, But Which Can Only Be Addressed, In Their Purity, In Fiction.

I Have Never Resisted The Lord In My Life, And I Never Will. But I'm Not So Hungry For Dialogue With Him That I Have To Make Up His Part As Well As My Own.

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

If It Isn't A Wonderful Story First, Who Cares How "important" It Is?

Your Trust In Rationality Makes You Irrational.

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

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

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.

I Listen To Music Constantly While Writing.

Listening To Music

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To Reach Out To You When I'm In Need, And To Try To Be Here For You When You Need Me Back. And To Feel Such Tenderness When I Look At You That I Want To Stand Between You And All The World: And Yet Also To Lift You Up And Carry You Above The Strong Currents Of Life; And At The Same Time, I Would Be Glad To Stand Always Like This, At A Distance, Watching You, The Beauty Of You.

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.

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

Sometimes Happiness Consists Of Finding The Right Balance Of Misery.

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.

Just Because The Only Way You Can Maintain Control Over Your Bodily Passions Is To Sit Straight In Your Chair, Knees Together, Hands Delicately Arranged In Our Lap, Fingers Tightly Intertwined, Does Not Mean That I Am Required To Do The Same.

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.

Thank God For You, Ender. Thank God.

How Short Life Is For Fools.

How Short Life Is

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

It's What I Was Born For, Isn't It? If I Don't Go, Why Am I Alive?

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?

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Telling The Truth

All The Common People Want Is To Be Left Alone. All The Ordinary Soldier Wants Is To Collect His Pay And Not Get Killed. That's Why The Great Forces Of History Can Be Manipulated By Astonishingly Small Groups Of Determined People.

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

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

I Know, You've Been Here A Year, You Think These People Are Normal. Well, They're Not. We're Not. I Look In The Library, I Call Up Books On My Desk. Old Ones, Because They Won't Let Us Have Anything New, But I've Got A Pretty Good Idea What Children Are, And We're Not Children. Children Can Lose Sometimes, And Nobody Cares. Children Aren't In Armies, They Aren't Commanders, They Don't Rule Over Forty Other Kids, It's More Than Anybody Can Take And Not Get Crazy.

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.

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You're Cultural Supremacists To The Core. You'll Perform Your Questionable Activities To Help Out The Poor Little Piggies, But There Isn't A Chance In The World You'll Notice When They Have Something To Teach You.

Don't Lie To Me! Don't Seem So Normal When I Know You Have Cut Yourself Off From Me In Your Heart! If You Can Put On Our Affectionate Closeness Like A Mask, Then I'll Never Be Able To Take Joy In It Again.

It's The Middle Class That Feels The Luxury Of Being Able To Have Causes.

Someone's Sent A Loving Note In Lines Of Returning Geese And As The Moon Fills My Western Chamber As Petals Dance Over The Flowing Stream Again I Think Of You The Two Of Us Living A Sadness Apart A Hurt That Can't Be Removed Yet When My Gaze Comes Down My Heart Stays Up

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The Great Forces Of History Were Real, After A Fashion. But When You Examined Them Closely, Those Great Forces Always Came Down To The Dreams And Hungers And Judgments Of Individuals.

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?

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.

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Be Proud, Bonito, Pretty Boy. You Can Go Home And Tell Your Father, Yes, I Beat Up Ender Wiggin, Who Was Barely Ten Years Old, And I Was Thirteen. And I Had Only Six Of My Friends To Help Me, And Somehow We Managed To Defeat Him, Even Though He Was Naked And Wet And Alone--ender Wiggin Is So Dangerous And Terrifying It Was All We Could Do Not To Bring Two Hundred.

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.

'so If We Can We'll Kill Every Last Of The Buggers, And If They Can They'll Kill Every Last One Of Us. As For Me,' Said Ender, 'i'm In Favor Of Surviving'.

Music Isn't Just A Pleasure, A Transient Satisfaction. It's A Need, A Deep Hunger; And When The Music Is Right, It's Joy. Love. A Foretaste Of Heaven. A Comfort In Grief. Is It Too Much To Think That Perhaps God Speaks To Us Sometimes Through Music? How, Then, Could I Be So Ungrateful As To Refuse The Message?

The Opposite Of The Happy Ending Is Not Actually The Sad Ending-the Sad Ending Is Sometimes The Happy Ending. The Opposite Of The Happy Ending Is Actually The Unsatisfying Ending.

And What? What's The Other Choice? To Passively Let Things Happen And Then Say: "tut-tut, What At Botch That Was"? Don't We All Manipulate People? Even If We Openly Ask Them To Make A Choice, Don't We Try To Frame It So They'll Chose As We Think They Should?

Order And Disorder', Said The Speaker, 'they Each Have Their Beauty.

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

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.

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

The Funny Thing Was, You See, That Mike Fink Didn't Think Of Himself As A Murderer. He Thought Of Life As A Contest, And Dying Was What Happened To Those Who Came Out Second Best, But It Wasn't The Same As Murder, It Was A Fair Fight.

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.

Where Ideas Are Real And Reality Is Shadow.

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.

In Creating The Strange Milieu In Which Your Story Takes Place, You Must First Understand As Well As You Possibly Can The Familiar Milieu In Which Your Own Life Is Taking Place. Until You Have Examined And Comprehended The World Around You, You Can't Possibly Create A Complex And Believable Imaginary World.

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.

The Only Way To Learn Is By Changing Your Mind.

Thank You For This, Peter. For Dry Eyes And Silent Weeping. You Taught Me How To Hide Anything I Felt. More Than Ever, I Need That Now.

Isn’t That What It Means To Be Civilized? That You Can Wait To Get What You Want?

He Is Dead, She Thought Bitterly, Because We Have Forgotten Him.

Withholding A Decision Is A Decision.

It's About Me, Or People Wouldn't Be So Anxious To Keep Me From Knowing About It. The Absence Of Information Is Information. ~ Ender

Rumors Are The Sauce Of A Dry Life.

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.

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

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 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.

There Were Crimes And Quarrels, Alongside Kindness And Cooperation; There Were People Who Loved Each Other And People Who Did Not; It Was A Human World.

With Life. Rooter Says That Life Is How God Gives Purpose To The Universe.

A Rustic Setting Always Suggests Fantasy; To Suggest Science Fiction, You Need Sheet Metal And Plastic. You Need Rivets.

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

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

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

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.

An Enemy, Ender Wiggin," Whispered The Old Man. "i Am Your Enemy, The First One You've Ever Had Who Was Smarter Than You. There Is No Teacher But The Enemy. No One But The Enemy Will Tell You What The Enemy Is Going To Do. No One But The Enemy Will Ever Teach You How To Destroy And Conquer. Only The Enemy Shows You Where You Are Weak. Only The Enemy Tells You Where He Is Strong. And The Rules Of The Game Are What You Can Do To Him And What You Can Stop Him From Doing To You. I Am Your Enemy From Now On. From Now On I Am Your Teacher.

I Stole Their Future From Them; I Can Only Being To Repay By Seeing What I Can Learn From Their Past.

Working Is Hard And Distracts From Having Fun.

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

Human: That's Stupid. Isn't There Grass On Both Sides?

History Is An Omlette. The Eggs Are Already Broken.

Unemployment Is Capitalism's Way Of Getting You To Plant A Garden.

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

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.

I'll Have That Someday, Thought Peter. Someone Who'll Kiss Me Good-bye At The Door. Or Maybe Just Someone To Put A Blindfold Over My Head Before They Shoot Me. Depending On How Things Turn Out.

...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.

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.

It's The Problem With Age. You Have All These Rusty Arguments, And No Quarrel To Use Them In. My Brain Is A Museum, But Alas, I'm The Only Visitor, And Even I Am Not Terribly Interested In The Displays.

No Human Being, When You Understand His Desires, Is Worthless. No One's Life Is Nothing.

One Bachelor Is An Irritation. Ten Thousand Bachelors Are A War.

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

I'm Neutral On Lying, Seeing As How There's Times When The Truth Just Hurts People.

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.

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.

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.

Good People Can't Out-think Evil, Cause Evil Thinks Of Things Good Folks Can't Think Of.

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

At First He Thought He Felt Bad Because He Was Afraid Of Leading An Army, But It Wasn't True. He Knew He'd Make A Good Commander. He Felt Himself Wanting To Cry. He Hadn't Cried Since The First Few Days Of Homesickness After He Got Here. He Tried To Put A Name On The Feeling That Put A Lump In His Throat And Made Him Sob Silently, However Much He Tried To Hold It Down. He Bit Down On His Hand To Stop The Feeling, To Replace It With Pain. It Didn't Help.

To Have A Choice At All Is To Be Free - Even When The Choice Is Between Two Terrible Things.

It Is Possible To Have Words Come To Your Mind, And Still Refrain From Speaking Them Aloud.

Debased Men, But They All Had Something In Common: They Showed A Keen Regard For Virtue, And Tried To Dress Themselves In That Costume. Hypocrisy, For All Its Bad Reputation, At Least Showed A Decent Respect For Goodness.

I Don't Believe That There Are Aliens. I Believe There Are Really Different People.

When I Am Drunk I Am At My Best. It Is The National Knack Of The French.

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--

People Love To Hear The Brag Of The Local Boy, Because They Want Him To Be Great, But The Foreigner Must Deny That He Has Any Outstanding Virtue - This Is What Will Endear Him To The Locals.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

For Children Love Is A Feeling; For Adults, It Is A Decision. Children Wait To Learn If Their Love Is True By Seeing How Long It Lasts; Adults Make Their Love True By Never Wavering From Their Commitment.

He’d Undone All He Could. You Can Be Sorry, And You Can Be Forgiven, But You Can’t Call Back The Futures That Your Bad Decisions Lost

Remember, The Enemy's Gate Is Down.

At Some Point, Every Science Fiction And Fantasy Story Must Challenge The Reader's Experience And Learning. That's Much Of The Reason Why The Genre Is So Open To Experimentation And Innovation That Other Genres Reject--strangeness Is Our Bread And Butter. Spread It Thick Or Slice It Thin, It's Still Our Staff Of Life.

Intellectual Understanding Does Not Always Bring Visceral Belief.

Sometimes Lies Were More Dependable Than The Truth.

The Criminal Misuse Of Time Was Pointing Out The Mistakes. Catching Them―noticing Them―that Was Essential. 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. The Part Of The Man's Statement That Was True, However, Was About The Uselessness Of Speaking Up. If I Know That The Teacher Is Wrong, And Say Nothing, Then I Remain The Only One Who Knows, And That Gives Me An Advantage Over Those Who Believe The Teacher.

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.

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.

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

Asking A Man If He Could Be Trusted Was Like Asking An Unwed Girl If She Was A Virgin. The Question Mattered, But The Asking Of It Was Gross Insult.

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

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

So The Whole War Is Because We Can't Talk To Each Other.

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

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.

That's What So Many People Didn't Understand About Life. The Real World Is The One Within The Walls Of Homes; The Outside World, Of Careers And Politics And Money And Fame, That Was The Fake World, Where Nothing Lasted, And Things Were Real Only To The Extent They Harmed Or Helped People Inside Their Homes.

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.

The Essence Of Training Is To Allow Error Without Consequence.

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

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

Ender Nodded. It Was A Lie, Of Course, That It Wouldn’t Hurt A Bit. But Since Adults Always Said It When It Was Going To Hurt, He Could Count On That Statement As An Accurate Prediction Of The Future. Sometimes Lies Were More Dependable Than The Truth.

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.

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.

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

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.

Every Person Is Defined By The Communities She Belongs To.

You Frighten Me, When You Say There Isn't Time." "i Don't See Why. Christians Have Been Expecting The Imminent End Of The World For Millennia." "but It Keeps Not Ending." "so Far, So Good.

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.

So From Then On, He Looked At All His Choices And Said, What Would A Good Person Do, And Then Did It. But He Has Now Learned Something Very Important About Human Nature. If You Spend Your Whole Life Pretending To Be Good, Then You Are Indistinguishable From A Good Person. Relentless Hypocrisy Eventually Becomes The Truth.

Into The The Air, Into The Earth, Into The Fire, I Am With You.

It's Simple. Nothing Exists Except In Relation To Something Else.

You Who Speak Languages, You Are Such Liars.

My Own Feeling Is That Human Happiness Is A Very Random Thing, And Bestows Itself Willy-nilly, And There's Not Much Deserving About The Matter.

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

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.

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

How Clever Of Me. I Have Found Such A Pathway Into Hell That I Can Never Get Back Out.

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

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

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.

Laws Against Homosexual Behavior Should Remain On The Books.

Peace. That's What Salaam Means. Peace Unto You." The Words Brought Forth An Echo From Ender's Memory. His Mother's Voice Reading To Him Softly, When He Was Very Young. ... The Kiss, The Word, The Peace Were With Him Still. I Am Only What I Remember, And Alai Is My Friend In A Memory So Intense That They Can't Tear Him Out. Like Valentine, The Strongest Memory Of All.

All Is Going Well, Very Well, I Couldn’t Ask For Anything Better— So Why Do I Hate My Life?

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.

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.

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

Oh No, Real Life Is Escape. The Great Terrors, The Horrors--we Hope--of Your Life Come From Reading Fiction.

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

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

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.

There's No Need To Legalize Gay Marriage. I Have Plenty Of Gay Friends Who Are Committed Couples; Some Of Them Call Themselves Married, Some Don't, But Their Friends Treat Them As Married. Anybody Who Doesn't Like It Just Doesn't Hang Out With Them.

There Was No Name For The Disease; His Body Had Gone Insane, Forgotten The Blueprint By Which Human Beings Were Built. Even Now The Disease Still Lives On In His Children. Not In Our Bodies, But In Our Souls. We Exist Where Normal Human Children Are Expected To Be; We're Even Shaped The Same. But Each Of Us In Our Own Way Has Been Replaced By An Imitation Child, Shaped Out Of A Twisted, Fetid, Lipidous Goiter That Grew Out Of Father's Soul.

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.

Someday Stars Will Wind Down Or Blow Up. Someday Death Will Cover Us All Like The Water Of A Lake And Perhaps Nothing Will Ever Come To The Surface To Show That We Were Ever There. But We Were There, And During The Time We Lived, We Were Alive. That's The Truth - What Is, What Was, What Will Be - Not What Could Be, What Should Have Been, What Never Can Be.

Madness, And Then Illumination.

Religion Makes Them Crazy. Not A Woman I Ever Met Wasn't Crazy With Religion.

As He Thought Of It, Though, He Could Not Imagine What “just Living” Might Actually Be. He Had Never Done It In His Life. But He Wanted To Do It Anyway.

This Emotion I'm Feeling Now, This Is Love, Right?" "i Don't Know. Is It A Longing? Is It A Giddy Stupid Happiness Just Because You're With Me?" "yes," She Said. "that's Influenza," Said Miro. "watch For Nausea Or Diarrhea Within A Few Hours.

Parents Always Make Their Worst Mistakes With Their 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.

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

Home Is Anywhere That You Know All Your Friends And All Your Enemies.

That Is The Earth, He Thought. Not A Globe Thousands Of Kilometers Around, But A Forest With A Shining Lake, A House Hidden At The Crest Of A Hill, High In The Trees, A Grassy Slope Leading Upwards From The Water, Fish Leaping And Birds Strafing To Take The Bugs That Lived At The Border Between Water And Sky. Earth Was The Constant Noise Of Crickets, And Winds, And Birds

It's All Just Fictions Anyway. We Do What We Do And Then We Make Up Reasons For It Afterward But They're Never The True Reasons, The Truth Is Always Just Out Of Reach.

There Are Times When The World Is Rearranging Itself, And At Times Like That, The Right Words Can Change The World.

I'm Right Here. This Is Who I Really Am. I'm Not Pretending.

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

Science Fiction

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Charles Schumer

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