Orson Scott Card

From BillionQuotes

Contents 1 BY BOOK 1.1 ***Quotes that need to be filed! 1.2 ENDER SERIES 1.2.1 Ender's Game : Book 1 1.2.2 Speaker For The Dead : Book 2 1.2.3 Xenocide : Book 3 1.2.4 Children Of The Mind : Book 4 1.2.5 Ender's Shadow : Book 5 1.2.6 Shadow Of The Hegemon : Book 6 1.2.7 Shadow Puppets : Book 7 1.2.8 Shadow Of The Giant : Book 8 1.3 HOMECOMING SAGA 1.3.1 The Memory Of Earth : Book 1 1.3.2 The Call Of Earth : Book 2 1.3.3 The Ships Of Earth : Book 3 1.3.4 Earthfall : Book 4 1.3.5 Earthborn : Book 5 1.4 TALES OF ALVIN MAKER 1.4.1 Seventh Son : Book 1 1.4.2 Red Prophet : Book 2 1.4.3 Prentice Alvin : Book 3 1.4.4 Alvin Journeyman : Book 4 1.4.5 Heartfire : Book 5 1.4.6 The Crystal City : Book 6 1.5 WOMEN OF GENESIS 1.5.1 Sarah 1.5.2 Rebekah 1.5.3 Rachel And Leah 1.6 An Open Book 1.7 The Abyss 1.8 Enchantment 1.9 First Meetings 1.10 The Folk Of The Fringe 1.11 Hart's Hope 1.12 Homebody 1.13 Lost Boys 1.14 Lovelock 1.15 Magic Mirror 1.16 Magic Street 1.17 Maps In A Mirror 1.18 Pastwatch 1.19 Robota 1.20 Saints 1.21 Songmaster 1.22 stone tables 1.23 A Storyteller In Zion 1.24 Treason 1.25 Treasure Box 1.26 The Worthing Chronicle 1.27 The Worthing Saga 1.28 Wyrms 2 BY TOPIC 2.1 Aliens 2.2 Beliefs 2.3 Control 2.4 Characters in his writing: 2.5 Civilization 2.6 Crime 2.7 Death 2.8 Dialogue 2.9 Evil 2.10 Fiction 2.11 Funny 2.12 Hate 2.13 History 2.14 Honesty 2.15 Humanity 2.16 Identity 2.17 Knowledge 2.18 Legacy 2.19 Love 2.20 Media 2.21 Morality 2.22 Osama Bin Laden 2.23 Pain 2.24 Perception 2.25 Politics 2.26 Psychology 2.27 Philosophy 2.28 Rationality & logic 2.29 Religion 2.30 Science 2.31 Science Fiction 2.32 Sexuality 2.33 Understanding 2.34 Un-Organized 2.35 War 2.36 Wisdom 2.37 Women & Men 2.38 Writing 2.39 3 Related topics

BY BOOK

***Quotes that need to be filed!

• The lies we live will always be confessed in the stories that we tell
• "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 marshaled, or his enemies will unmask him in order to better understand the disease that has produced such a warped and twisted mind."
• "[It] was written and sold. I knew it was a strong story because I cared about it and believed in it. I had no idea that it would have the effect it had on the audience. While most people ignored it, of course, and continue to live full and happy lives without reading it or anything else by me, there was still a surprisingly large group who responded to the story with some fervency."
• "Even if there's no such thing as free will, we have to treat each other as if there were free will in order to live together in society. Because otherwise, every time somebody does something terrible, you can't punish him, because he can't help it, because his genes or his environment or god made him do it, and every time somebody does something good, you can't honor him because he was a puppet, too. If you think that everybody around you is a puppet why bother talking to them at all? Why even try to plan anything or create anything, since everything you plan or create or desire or dream of is just acting out the script your puppeteer built into you." <Xenocide>
• "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. God, our genes, our environment, or some stupid programmer keying in code at an ancient terminal -- there's no way free will can ever exist if we as individuals are the result of some external cause."
• "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?" <Xenocide>
• "A strange thing happened then. The speaker agreed with her that she had made a mistake that night, and she knew when he said the words that it was true, that his judgment was correct. And yet she felt strangely healed, as if simply speaking her mistake were enough to purge some of the pain of it. For the first time, then, she caught a glimpse of what the power of speaking might be. It wasn't a matter of confession, penance, and absolution, like the priests offered. It was something else entirely. Telling the story of who she was, and then realizing that she was no longer the same person. That she had made a mistake, and the mistake had changed her, and now she would not make the mistake again because she had become someone else, someone less afraid, someone more compassionate."
• "But I hope that in the lives of [the characters], you will find stories worth holding in your memory, perhaps even in your heart. That's the transaction that counts more than best-seller lists, royalty statements, awards, or reviews. Because in the pages of this book, you and I will meet one-on-one, my mind and yours, and you will enter a world of my making and dwell there, not as a character that I control, but as a person with a mind of your own. You will make of my story what you need it to be, if you can. I hope my tale is true enough and flexible enough that you can make it into a world worth living in."
• "The danger that keeps me just a little frightened with every book I write, however, is that I’ll overreach myself once too often and try to write a story that I’m just plain not talented or skilful enough to write. That's the dilemma every storyteller faces. It is painful to fail. But it is far sadder when a storyteller stops wanting to try."

ENDER SERIES

Ender's Game : Book 1

• "This is the essence of the transaction between storyteller and audience. The 'true' story is not the one that exists in my mind; it is certainly not the written words on the bound paper that you hold in your hands. The story in my mind is nothing but a hope; the text of the story is the tool I created in order to try to make that hope a reality. 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." (Intro)
• "... 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." (Intro)
• "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."
• "Ender stepped under the water and rinsed himself, took the sweat of combat and let it run down the drain. All gone, except they recycled it and we'll be drinking Bonze’s blood water in the morning. All the life gone out of it, but his blood just the same, his blood and my sweat, washed down in their stupidity or cruelty or whatever it was that made them let it happen."
• "‘Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to be controlled by good people, by people who love you.'"
• At last he came to a door, with these words in glowing emeralds: the end of the world. He did not hesitate. He opened the door and stepped through.
• 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.
• Ender would be pleased - every one of them was stupid.
• "...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."
• Individual human beings are all tools, that the others use to help us all survive.
• There was no doubt in Ender's mind. There was no help for him. Whatever he faced, now and forever, no one would save him from it. Peter might be scum, but Peter had been right, always right; the power to cause pain is the only power that matters, the power to kill and destroy, because if you can't kill you are always subject to those who can, and nothing no one will ever save you.
• "Human beings didn't evolve brains in order to lie around on lakes. Killing is the first thing we learned. And a good thing we did, or we'd be dead, and the tigers would rule the earth."
• "There is no teacher but the enemy."
• The screen went blank, and words appeared. Play again?
• "I’ve watched through his eyes, I’ve listened through his ears, and I tell you he's the one. Or at least as close as we're going to get."
• Well, I’m your man. I'm the bloody bastard you wanted when you had me spawned. I'm your tool, and what difference does it make if I hate the part of me that you most need? What difference does it make that when the little serpents killed me in the game, I agreed with them, and was glad.
• Forget it, Mazer. 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.
• "I went back through some of the tapes. I can't help it. I like the kid. I think we're going to screw him up.” “Of course we are. It's our job. We're the wicked witch. We promise gingerbread, but we eat the little bastards alive."
• "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 ever 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 when 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’ve lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it."
• "We have to go. I'm almost happy here."
• "Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be."
• "Then I’ll tell the truth. We're allowed to do that in emergencies. We can't plan for everything, you know."
• It was a lie of course, that it wouldn't hurt a bit. But since adults always said that 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.
• You’ll keep looking around for something, something you were looking for, but you can’t find it, and you can’t remember what it was.
• We have to strike a delicate balance. Isolate him enough that he remains creative -otherwise he'll adopt the system here and well lose him. At the same time, we need to make sure he keeps a strong ability to lead.
• "I thought you were my friend.” "Whatever gave you that idea...?" "Because you - you didn't lie."
• "Think what we're going to do to him" “We're going to make him the best military commander in history." "And then put the fate of the world on his shoulders."
• He can never come to believe that anyone will ever help him out, ever. If he once thinks there's an easy way out, he's wrecked.
• Thank you for this... For dry eyes and silent weeping. You taught me how to hide anything I felt. More than ever, I need that now.
• His accent made him exotic and interesting; his broken arm made him a martyr; his sadism made him a natural focus for all those who loved pain in others.
• You remember this little boy they never tell you anymore truth than they have to.
• So he believed. Believed, but 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 [him] listen more carefully to what people meant, instead of what they said. It made him wise.
• He is dead...because we have forgotten him.
• It was a kind of magic…; a sacrifice that somehow stilled the dark gods that hunted for his soul.
• We don't think like other children, do we...? We don't talk like other children. And above all, we don't write like other children.
• It’s my greatest gift, I can see where the weak points are, I can see how to get in and use them, I just see those things without even trying.
• Is it some law of human nature that you inevitably become whatever your first commander was? I can quit right now, if that's so.
• I’m hurting you to make you a better solider in every way. To sharpen your wit. To intensify your effort. To keep you off balance, never sure what's going to happen next, so you always have to be ready for anything, ready to improvise, determined to win no matter what. I'm also making you miserable. That's why they brought you to me... So you could be just like me... But I’ll be watching you, more compassionately that you know, and when the time is right you'll find that I’m your friend, and you are the solider you want to be.
• For now that they could not be together, they must indefinitely be apart, and what had been sure and unshakable was now fragile and insubstantial; for the moment we are not together, [he] is a stranger, for he has a life now that will be no part of mine, and that means that when I see him we will not know each other.
• I fear that I also underestimate the stupidity of the rest of mankind.
• How kind of them. I wish, and they deliver.
• I will remember this, when I am defeated. To keep dignity, and give honor where it’s due, so that defeat is not a disgrace. And I hope I don't have to do it often.
• He was commander every moment they were together. He never had to remind them of it; he simply was.
• Ender mentally added him to his private list of people who also qualified as human beings.
• There were many, too, who hated him. Hated him for being young, for being excellent, for having made their victories look paltry and weak.
• He was a solider, and if anyone had asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he wouldn't have known what they meant.
• He isn't a killer. He just wins - thoroughly.
• I’m very good at that. Understanding what other people think.
• 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. I make it impossible for them to ever hurt me again. I grind them and grind them until they don't exist.
• Oh well it’s only the fate of the world.
• He believes that he doesn't want to leave here, but there is still too much of peter in him. Or too much of me. None of us could be happy for long, doing nothing. Or perhaps it’s just that none of us could be happy living with no other company than ourself.
• It had to be a trick or you couldn't have done it. It’s the bind we were in. We had to have a commander with so much empathy that he would think like [them], understand them and anticipate them. So much compassion that he would win the love of his underlings and work with them like a perfect machine... But somebody with that much compassion could never be the killer we needed. Could never go into battle willing to win at all costs. If you knew, you couldn't do it. If you were the kind of person who would do it even if you knew, you could never have understood [them] well enough.
• You were reckless, brilliant and young.

Speaker For The Dead : Book 2

• Only one rabbi dared to expect of us such a perfect balance that we could preserve the law and still forgive the deviation. So, of course, we killed him.
• Tangents. The best parts of my intellectual life are tangential, in areas outside my expertise. I supposed because within my area of expertise the regulations they have placed upon me make it impossible to know or understand anything
• ”Do you like her?” “I think that I understood that she didn’t want to be liked. As if she were a visitor who expected to go back home any day.”
• She didn’t know [him], so she thought it was the look she had seen in so many eyes, the desire to dominate, to rule her, the desire to cut through her determination and break her independence, the desire to make her submit
• So he wasn’t like the adults who always believed lies as long as they made her seem to be the child they wanted her to be
• ”That’s me insane to the root” “Not insane. Driven by a sense of purpose that is frightening”
• So you chose not to be part of the bands of children who group together for the sole purpose of excluding others, and people look at you and say, poor girl, she’s so isolated, but you know a secret, you know who you really are. You are the one human being who is capable of understanding the alien mind, because you are the alien mind; you know what it is to be unhuman because there’s never been any human group that gave you credentials as a bona fide homo sapien
• [He] wondered if it was already too late to teach her how to be a human
• Anthropology is never an exact science; the observer never experiences the same culture as the participant. But there are natural limitations inherent to the science. It is the artificial limitations that hamper us – and, through us, you
• It frightened him to have this girl need something from him so desperately
• You silent boy, you have found such eloquence now that you can’t be a mere boy anymore
• How could he not know that children had minds of their own, and resisted taming?
• ”It was me” “You were a tool” “It was me” “We forgive you”
• ”[This] isn’t my home” [she] felt his words like an accusation: you rooted yourself here without thought of whether I could live in this soil. But it’s not my fault, she wanted to answer – you’re the one who’s leaving, not me.
• “I followed you gladly to two dozen worlds, but you wouldn’t even stay two weeks when I asked you” “Listen to yourself and then see why I have to leave now, before you tear me to pieces”
• “I wanted to hurry because I have a work to do there, and every day here is marking time, and because it hurts me every time I see you and [he] growing closer and you and me growing more distant, even though I know it’s exactly as it should be, so when I decided to go, I thought that going quickly was better, and I was right; you know I’m right. I never thought you’d hate me for it” “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 “
• Not that they talked – [they] knew each other so well that there was often nothing to say. But without her there, [he] grew impatient with his own thoughts; they never came to a point, because there was no one to tell them to
• I only disbelieve the unbelievable
• You never cease to amaze me, the way you turn people into plasma
• Order and disorder, they each have their beauty
• His eyes were seductive with understanding
• They are too cruel a god for me to worship anymore
• I wish I had died before seeing him, he will surely undo me before he’s through
• Marriage is not a covenant between a man and a woman; even the beasts cleave together and produce their young. Marriage is a covenant between a man and a woman on one side and their community on the other
• He is innocent of wrong-doing, and so am I. We shall forgive each other and go on. It was a good decision, and [she] was proud of it. The trouble was, she couldn’t carry it out
• Time, time is such a fleeting, insubstantial thing. As Shakespeare said, “I wasted time, and now doth time waste me”
• [He] always seemed to take it so personally that the universe didn’t always work the way he wanted it to
• ”Don’t condescend to me mother” “But Quim, it seems so natural, considering how you always condescend to me”
• Don’t ever try to teach me about good and evil. I've been there; you’ve seen nothing but the map
• My, but I miss the days when we never talked to each other for weeks at a time
• Ignorance and deception can’t save anybody. Knowing saves them
• You don’t seem to understand that you don’t have the right to put blinders on other people’s eyes
• Don’t even admit that you doubt their religion
• It wasn’t a matter of confession, penance, and absolution, like the priests offered. It was something else entirely. Telling the story of who she was, and then realizing that she was no longer the same person. That she had made a mistake, and the mistake had changed her, now she had become someone else, someone less afraid, someone more compassionate
• I speak to everyone in the language they understand. That isn’t being slick. It’s being clear
• ”In your judgment” “I have no one else’s judgment to use”
• Miro expected him to be wise. He had not expected him to be so intrusive, so dangerous. Yes, he was wise, all right, he kept seeing past pretense, kept saying or doing outrageous things that were, when you thought about it, exactly right. It was as if he was so familiar with the human mind that he could see, right on your face, the desires so deep, the truths so well-disguised that you didn’t even know yourself that you had them in you
• There’s so much that we don’t understand. And so much more that you don’t understand. We should tell each other more
• You’re a fool. If people only react to the way that others treat them, then nobody is responsible for anything. If your sins are not your own to choose, then how can you repent?
• You’re dream is a good one. It’s the dream of every living creature. 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. There are two ways, though, to fulfill is. One way is to kill anything that is not yourself, to swallow it up or destroy it, until nothing is left to oppose you. But that way is evil. You say to all the universe, only I will be great, and to make room for me the rest of you must give up even what you already have, and become nothing
• I’m not one to despise other people for their sins. I haven’t found one yet, that I didn’t say to myself, I’ve done worse than this
• ”When you really know somebody you can’t hate them” “Or maybe it’s just that you can’t really know them until you stop hating them” “Is that a circular paradox? Dom Cristao says that most truth can only be expressed in circular paradoxes” “I don’t think it has anything to do with truth, it’s just cause and effect. We can never sort them out. Science refuses to admit any cause except the first cause – knock down one domino, the one next to it also falls. But when it comes to human beings, the only type of cause that matters is the final cause, the purpose. What a person had in mind. Once you know 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."
• As long as you keep getting born, it’s ok to die sometimes
• ”There are worse reasons to die, than to die because you cannot bear to kill” “What about someone who can’t kill, and can’t die, and can’t live, either?” “Don’t deceive yourself. You’ll do all three someday”
• You're afraid of the stranger, whether he's utlanning or framling. When you think of killing a man that you know of and value, then it doesn't matter what his shape is. He's varalese then, or worse - djur, the dire beast, that comes in the night with slavering jaws. If you had the only gun in your village, and the beasts that has torn apart one of your people was coming again, would you stop to ask if they also had the right to live, or would you act to save your village, the people that you knew, the people who depended on you?
• A question isn't an argument, unless you think you know my answer.
• Was it something unavoidable, when strangers met, that the meeting had to be marked with blood?
• How clever of me. I have found such a pathway into hell that I can never get back out.
• He would go to minister the girl ... For in her brilliance, her isolation, her pain, her guilt, he saw his own stolen childhood and the seeds of pain that lived with him still.
• She's your other self. Will you really leave her for us?
• In all [my] life, you are the first person [I’ve] known that wasn't [myself]. [I] never had to be understanding because [I] always understood.
• ”I never thought id lose you again” “But I knew we had lost each other on the day you first loved [him]." “Then you should have told me! I wouldn't have done it" “That's why I didn't tell you. But it isn't true ... You would have done it anyway. And I wanted you to. You've never been happier."
• For he loved her, as you can only love someone who is an echo of yourself at your time of deepest sorrow.
• ”Sitting there in paranoid fantasy” “You can’t read minds” “You always get morose and speculate about the destruction of the universe whenever you come out of starflight. It’s your peculiar manifestation of motion sickness.”
• When someone dies, a loved one, and your last contact with them was angry or spiteful, then you begin to blame yourself. If only I hadn't said this, if only I hadn't said that.
• ”That’s right. I want all the secrets opened up. I want all the files unlocked. I don’t want anything hidden” “You don’t know what you’re asking. You don’t know how much pain it will cause if all the secrets come out” “Take a look at my family. How can the truth cause anymore pain than the secrets have already caused?”
• ”Why are they so stupid? Not to know the truth when they hear it?” “This is how humans are: we question all our beliefs, except the ones we really believe, and those we never think to question.”
• He wasn't telling the truth, with trumpets; he was telling the truth, the story you wouldn't think to doubt because it’s taken for granted.
• I think you can’t possibly know the truth about somebody unless you love them.
• I knew her so well that I loved her, or maybe I loved her so well that I knew her.
• Be the best at whatever you do.
• Life, so long waited for, and not until today could she be sure that she would be, not the last of her tribe, but the first.
• He is dangerous, he is beautiful, I could drown in his understanding.
• He is dangerous, the infidel, the anti-Christ, he walks brazenly into places in my heart that I had kept as holy ground, where no one else was ever permitted to stand.
• Sickness and healing are in every heart. Death and deliverance are in every hand.
• When you strike, your aim will be deadly. These people came for entertainment, but they're your targets; you will pierce them to the hearts.
• It told us that death means something completely different to them. If you really believed that someone was perfect in heart... So righteous that to live another day could only cause them to be less perfect, then wouldn't it be a good thing for them if they were killed and taken directly into heaven?
• How suddenly we find the flesh of god within us after all, when we thought we were only made of dust
• Never mind that the rules are stupid and counterproductive. I broke them.
• ”Are you ready to reveal yourself to the rest of humanity?" "I’ve always been ready. The question is, are they ready to know me?"
• I carry the seeds of death with me and plant them wherever I linger long enough to love. My parents died so others could live; now I live, so others must die.

Xenocide : Book 3

• When have you ever seen someone who had no doubts who was also correct about anything?"
• The strangest thing about humans is the way they pair up, males and females. Constantly at war with each other, never content to leave each other alone. They never seem to grasp the idea that males and females are separate species with completely different needs and desires, forced to come together only to reproduce.
• Those who know each other only through symbolic representations are forced to imagine each other. And because their imagination is imperfect, they are often wrong.
• He had the decency to be appalled by his own brutality.
• ”If you asked me to marry you all over again today, I'd say yes." “And if id only met you for the first time today, id ask." they had said the same words many, many times before. Yet they still smiled to hear them, because they were still true.
• Why did I come? I didn't come. I went. I wasn't coming here, to meet these people. I was leaving there. Getting away. Only I tricked myself.
• She had passed his test. She had listened to him the way no one else did - without impatience, without finishing his sentences, without letting her gaze waver from his face. He had spoken to her, not with careful precision, but with great emotion... He could talk to this woman as naturally as he had ever talked to anyone before... Yes, she was opinionated, headstrong, bossy, and quick to reach conclusions. But she could also listen to an opposing view, change her mind when she needed to. She could listen, and so he could speak. Perhaps with her he could still be [himself].
• You've done all this thinking, you've seen all the possibilities for the future - good ones and bad ones alike - and yet the only ones you are willing to believe in, the imagined future that you seize upon as the foundation for all your moral judgments, is the only future in which everyone that you and I have ever loved and everything we'd ever hoped for must be obliterated.
• I choose to live in a universe that has some hope in it.
• "I desire [belief] enough to act as if I believed, maybe that's what faith is." “Or deliberate insanity."
• Before I do it, I have to know: is it a cause worth dying for?
• ”How can I figure out something that isn't just the logical conclusion of things that human beings have already figured out and written somewhere?" “You think of things all the time" "I’m trying to conceive of something inconceivable. I'm trying to find answers to questions that humans beings have never even tried to ask."
• She did not understand all of human nature, but [he] had taught her this: to stop a human being from doing something, you must find a way to make this person stop wanting to do it.
• That was how human beings satisfied their sense of responsibility - checking again even when they knew it was unnecessary
• I have too many secrets.
• 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.
• Who is more cursed, the one who dies, unknowing until the very moment of his death or the one who watched his destruction as it approached, step by step, for days and weeks and years?
• Maybe they didn't have to discuss things like this. Maybe they had spent so many years together that they knew how to cooperate so smooth things for other people without even thinking about it. Like actors who have performed the same roles together so often that they can improvise without the slightest confusion.
• I just don't what to face her again. Because I love her and I fear her. Because I’m not sure whether I should help her or try to destroy her.
• She believed that people revealed themselves most when they were vaguely anxious, and few things brought out nonspecific anxieties like being in the presence of a person who never speaks.
• Is it possible she had lost her soul inside his?
• No matter how well you know what a person has done and what he thought of what he was doing when he did it and what he now thinks of what he did, it is impossible to be certain of what he will do next.
• She probably knew this, intellectually. But like all other human beings, she did not always act accordingly to her understanding. She had lost too many of the people that she loved; when she felt one more of them slipping away, her response was emotional, not intellectual. [he] had come into her life as a healer, a protector. It was his job to keep her from being afraid, and now she was afraid, and she was angry at him for having failed her.
• She might be protective and possessive with her children whom she thought of as needing her, but with the people she needed, she was the opposite. If she feared they would be taken from her, she withdrew from them; she stopped permitting herself to need them.
• ”She's too tough to die." “No. She's so fragile right now that any blow might kill her. Not her body. Her - trust. Her hope. Don't give her any reason to think you're not with her, no matter what."
• He had no shred of fear or hatred in him.
• I really don't fear death. I never knew that.
• How do they manage it, these humans - beginning each time so innocently, yet always sending up with the most blood on their hands?
• We pretend to be whatever we must in order to survive.
• Don't call the speaker of truth a liar.
• You don't love him, you don't know how to love people. You only know how to own them. And because people will never act just like you want them too... You'll always feel betrayed. And because everybody dies, you'll always feel cheated. But you're the cheat... You're the one who uses our love for you to try to control us.
• You don't understand how devastating fear and rage can be, and how quickly religion and civilization and human decency are forgotten when a mob forms.
• I thought: if I could just make a good family, if I could just learn to be to a mother to the children, their whole lives, what [he] was, coming so late into ours, then that would mean more in the long run, it would be a finer accomplishment than anything I could ever do with my mind or my hands.
• I blame on you only what you did. You started a fire on a hot, dry, windy day, despite all the warnings. I blame you for that, and if you hold yourself responsible for all the consequences of your own acts, then you are truly unworthy of human society and I hope you lose your freedom forever.
• The mob still had anger in it, some of them at least. Yet there were so many who were sick of it all, many who were already ashamed, already discovering in their hearts the terrible acts they had performed tonight, when their souls were given over to the will of the mob.
• We never forbid where we do not also have the power to prevent.
• If you act as the enemy of life, then life will become your enemy.
• Happiness can depend as easily on useless things as on useful ones.
• I think you were always pretending. Maybe you even fooled yourself. But one thing is certain. You were never an ordinary girl, and you could never had lead an ordinary life.
• ”She's just being a martyr" " no I’m not I’m being practical." “You're being a fool."
• ”You don't know that you're right." “And you don't know that I’m wrong." “It’s my life." “The hell it is."
• Simple food but it tasted good and they were satisfied.
• If you treat me this way, then I will treat you like a great lord, and if you do not detect the irony in my actions, then who of the two of us is the fool?
• Some will hate you for telling them, but some will be glad for it.
• He laughs, you cry... What strange animals we are.
• ”A male does his best, reproductively, if he wanders and copulates as widely as possible." "I’ve done the wandering. Somehow I missed out on the copulating."
• In [his] mind, madness. Thousands of competing contradictory impossible visions that make no sense all because they can’t all fit together but they do fit together, he makes them fit together, this way today, that way tomorrow, as they're needed. As if he can make a new idea-machine inside his head for every new problem he faces. As if he conceives of a new universe to live in, every hour a new one, often hopelessly wrong and he ends up making mistakes and bad judgments, but sometimes so perfectly right that it opens things up like a miracle and I look through his eyes and see the world his new way and it changes everything. Madness, and then illumination. We knew everything there was to know before... Now we discover that there are so many ways of knowing the same things that we'll never find them all.
• ”You're only so sure you're right because they're so sure you're wrong."
• ”The wise are not wise because they make no mistakes. They are wise because they correct their mistakes as soon as they recognize them."
• I looked for perfection, and I found something better.
• Sometimes I thought I was the only one who understood, even though half the time I didn't know what it was that I was understanding. I withdrew and watched, and because I didn't have any personal ego on the line... I could see more clearly than any of them.
• She thinks she's the only one in the would to ever suffer. I say that without rancor. I have simply observed that she's so full of pain, she's incapable of taking anyone else's pain seriously.
• I saw that he came in and listened and watched and understood who we were, each individual one of us. He tried to discover our need and then supply it. He took responsibility for other people and it didn't seem to matter to him how much it cost him.
• That means you, more than any of the others, stand to lose something truly beautiful and fine if we don't succeed in our endeavors.
• We realized that you were truly alive and beautiful in your perverse and tragic lonely way.
• Part of you but also not-you. Other. Outside but inside. Bound to you but free. It couldn't control you and you couldn't control it.
• You're making us very tired, with all your thinking of stupid imaginary impossible things.
• Failing to try and stop a murder that you might easily stop - how is that not murder?
• You both refuse to listen to anybody else. You know better about everything. And when you're both done, many many innocent people are dead.
• If you tell what you know, everyone is wiser. If you keep a secret, then everyone is a fool.
• Only you have the power to kill me completely. Only you have the power to make it so my death means nothing, so that all my people die after me and there is no one left to remember. Why shouldn't I leave my testament with you alone? Only you will decide whether or not it has any worth.
• Lets say I’m a suspector. I suspect there may be someone who cares what happens to us. That's one step better than merely wishing. And one step below hoping.
• Us or them.
• It’s the worst thing you'll ever do in your life, helping the people you love to something that in your heart you know is deeply wrong.
• ”He's not as smart as he thinks he is" “Yes he is. And if you doubt it, you're not as smart as you think you are."
• ”When you don't understand the consequences of your acts, how can you be blamed for them?" “You don't take the blame. But you still take the responsibility. For healing the wounds you caused."

Children Of The Mind : Book 4

• 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.
• ”You’re very smart. Smarter than I am, I hope. Though of course I have such incredible vanity that I can’t really believe that anyone is actually smarter than I am. Which means that I’m all the more in need of good advice, since I can’t actually conceive of needing any.” “You talk in circles” “That’s just part of my cruelty. To torment you with conversation”
• ”Do I think you actually care?” “It’s a good thing I have no soul. That’s the only thing that stops you from devouring it” “If I ever had your soul in my mouth I would spit it out.”
• If only we were wiser or better people perhaps the gods would explain the mad, unbearable things they do
• How I wish you could have kept on living a life of joy. But no one can. Language comes to us, and with it lies and threats, cruelty and disappointment. You walk, and those steps lead you outside the shelter of your home. To keep the joy of childhood you would have to die as a child, or live as one, never becoming a man, never growing. So I can grieve for the lost child, and yet not regret the good man braced with pain and riven with guilt, who yet was kind to me and many others, and whom I loved, and whom I also almost knew. Almost, almost knew
• ”All the stories are fictions. What matters is which fiction you believe."
• ”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."
• ”Your trust in rationality makes you irrational."
• ”Isn't that the sweetest little well-balanced undergraduate-level philosophy of life."
• "I know it as much as anyone knows anything. Knowledge is just opinion that you trust enough to act upon."
• ”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?"
• ”You don't believe that for a second." “But I believe that I believe it. And for me that's pretty good. Please don't disillusion me. I haven't had breakfast yet."
• ”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."
• I know something of how he feels. I know something of having to submerge your will in someone else's. To live for them, as if they were the star of the story of your life, and you merely a supporting player. I have been a slave. But at least in all that time I knew my own heart. I knew what I truly thought even as I did what they wanted, whatever it took to get what I wanted from them.
• What does it matter, to tell yourself that the thing controlling you comes from outside, if in fact you only experience it inside your own heart? Where can you run from it? How can you hide?
• They would not meet, but they would pass close to each other. She would notice him or not. He would speak to him or not. She still loved and needed him. Or not.
• [She] was not one to bend to anyone else's will.
• You'd think she'd learn something from that. But she still does the same thing. Making decisions that deform other people’s lives, without consulting them, without ever conceiving that perhaps they don't want her to save them from whatever supposed misery she's saving them from.
• But he did love her, with all his heart he loved her. All his heart? All of it he knew about.
• You aren't very good at determining what other people want and need from you... No one is. We're all as likely to hurt as help.
• There's no meaning of life if I’ve lost you.
• I’m not interested in my own life anymore. Do you understand? The only life I care about in the world is yours. If I lose you, what is there to hold me here?
• ”Obstacles? Men like you don't have obstacles. Just steppingstones." “Men like me?" “Yes, men like you. Just because I’ve never met any others. Just because no matter how much I loved [him] he was never for one day as alive as you are every minute. Just because I found myself loving as an adult for the first time when I loved you. Just because I have missed you more than I miss even my children, even my parents, even the lost loves of my life. Just because I can’t dream of anyone but you, that doesn't mean that there isn't somebody else just like you somewhere else. The universe is a big place. You can’t be all that special. Can you?” “You do still love me, then?" “Oh, is that what you came for? To find out if I loved you?" “Partly" "I do."
• Brilliant young people who were nevertheless silly with love-or youth, as if it made a difference.
• Nobody's rational. We all act because we're sure of what we want, and we believe that the actions we perform will get us what we want, but we never know anything for sure, and so all our rationalities are invented to justify what we were going to do anyway before we thought of any reasons.
• ”No matter what they say they all intend to live" “Except the suicides?" “They intended to live, too. Suicide is a desperate attempt to get rid of unbearable agony."
• You imagine that I love you, but I do not. I don't love anyone.
• Even gentle people recognize that sometimes the decision not to kill is a decision to die.
• Love was the genes of all creatures demanding that they be replicated, replicated, replicated.
• Life is a suicide mission.
• How do we remember? Is the brain a jar that holds our memories? Then when we die, does the jar break? Are our memories spilled on the ground and lost? Or is the brain a map that leads down twisted paths and into hidden corners? Then when we die, the map is lost but perhaps some explorer could wander through that strange landscape and find out the hiding places of our misplaced memories.
• When did I first start wanting him to love me?
• Have I lost my mind? Or have I, finally, found my heart?
• "I left because I couldn't......." “Because you couldn't bear to let him leave you. You felt it, didn't you? You felt him fading even then. You knew that he needed to go away, to end this life, and you couldn't bear to let another man leave you so you left him first."
• What had been lost was found again. And those who had been hungry without knowing the name of their hunger, were fed.
• That's life. It hurts, it’s dirty, and it feels very very good.
• I have a sense of comfortableness in love; it isn't grand sweeping passions that I expected to feel.
• Will the love I have for you be enough....? 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 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, your energy as you look up at these [people], speaking to them as an equal even though every movement of your hands, every fluttering syllable of your speech cries out that you're a child - is it enough for you that I feel these loves for you? Because it’s enough for me. 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’m Mr. Scared-from-Ass-to-Ankles. Whereas you are just plain old miss ass.
• ”You really can’t do it can you?" “Can’t what? Can’t bow down and kiss your feet?" “Can’t shut up to save your life."
• That's what civilized people do - they avoid circumstances that enrages them. Or if they can’t avoid it, they detach.
• You are only human. I mean it. The price of having these emotions, these passions, is that you have to control them, you have to bear them when they're too strong to bear. You're only human now. You'll never make these feelings go away. You just have to learn not to act on them.
• "I’ve had your tears with mine, and you've had mine with yours. I think that's more intimate than even a kiss." “Maybe. But not as fun."
• She wants what everybody wants - to be loved and cared for, to be part of something beautiful and fine, to have the respect of those she admires.
• You don't fight with minimum force, you fight with maximum force at endurable cost. You don't just pink your enemy, you don't even bloody him, you destroy his capability to fight back.
• I once heard a tale of a man who split himself in two. The one part never changed at all; the other grew and grew. The changeless part was always true, the growing part was always new, and I wondered, when the tale was through, which part was me, and which was you.
• [He], who was a stranger in every land, belonging nowhere, serving everywhere, until he chose this world as his home, not just because there was a family that needed him, but also because in this place he did not have to be entirely a member of the human race... He could be part of something larger than mere humanity

Ender's Shadow : Book 5

• Bean was tired of talking about this. She looked so happy when she talked about god, but he hadn’t figured it out yet, what god even was. It was like, she wanted to give god credit for every good thing, but when it was bad, then she didn’t mention god or had some reason why it was a good thing after all
• ”Sister Carlotta is a nun. You’ll never find a more honest person” “Honest people have been known to deceive themselves”
• He dreamed, as human beings always dreamed – random firings of memory and imagination that the unconscious mind tries to put together into coherent stories.
• ”You speak in theological terms, and yet I thought you were an unbeliever” theology is a joke to me. Amusing! I laugh at it. I can tell amusing stories about theology, to jest with believers”
• ”An eye for an eye? How Christian of you” “Unbelievers always want other people to act like Christians”
• That’s why bean never fully trusted his own guesses. He acted on them, but always kept himself open to the possibility that his interpretations might be wrong
• Unlike you, Wiggin, I do give the other guy a chance to learn what he’s doing before I insist on perfection
• I didn’t know Christians got so angry
• ”We’ll consider what you’ve told us. We wont be foolish” “You’ve already been foolish. I have no high expectations for you now.”
• The only thing a commander ever truly controls is his own army – training, morale, trust, initiative, command and, to a lesser degree, supply, placement, movement, loyalty, and courage in battle. The commander must be able to change his plans abruptly when obstacles or opportunities appear. If his army isn’t ready and willing to respond to his will, his cleverness comes to nothing
• Somebody has to roll the dice. Mine are the hands that hold those dice. I’m not a bureaucrat, placing my career above the larger purposes I was put here to serve. I will not put the dice in someone else’s hands, or pretend that I don’t have the choice I have.
• Come in, kidnapped child, hostage of fate. Come and talk to the fates, who are playing such clever little games with your life
• He knew that bean’s powers of analysis were extraordinary. So, also, were his powers of deception. Some of bean’s guesses weren’t right – but was that because he didn’t know the truth, or because he simply didn’t want them to know how much he knew, or how much he guessed
• I never wanted you here, because you’re too dangerous
• Now I have second-guess all my future decisions wondering how much my choices are influenced by the fact that this kid really pisses me off
• He knows how to form a group into the shape he wants it to have. He knows how to get people to work together. And he does it by the most minimal means possible
• Either she was a perfect actress or she was oblivious
• 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
• All those months when bean refused to see Ender, hid from him, it was because he couldn’t bear to face the fact that Ender was what bean only wished to be – the kind of person on whom you could put all your hopes, who could carry all your fears, and he would not let you down, would not betray you. I want to be the kind of boy you are, thought bean. But I don’t want to go through what you’ve been through to get there
• Even if that’s just bullshit, sir, it’s first-rate bullshit. I’ll pass it on
• There were times for absolute honesty between friends, but this wasn’t one of them
• Damn, but they’ve got us brainwashed, haven’t they!
• As if the universe were created to serve him, with all the people in it tuned to resonate his desires
• Nobody was going to wait for you strike. Because here’s the thing – we don't give a shit about fairness here. We’re soldiers. Soldiers do not give the other guy a sporting chance. Soldiers shoot in the back, lay traps and ambushes, lie to the enemy and outnumber the other bastard every chance they get. Your kind of murder only works among civilians. And you were too cocky, too stupid, too insane to realize that
• ”You ready to command a fleet?” ”I don’t know. It depends on whether they want to win” “Here’s the thing, bean. Soldiers don’t like to lose” “And that is why losing is a much more powerful teacher than winning”
• Please stop reassuring me of how respectful you are whenever you’re about to tell me that I’m an idiot
• You can’t rule out the impossible, because you never know which of your assumptions about what was possible might turn out, in the real universe, to be false
• So I have to fake it. No, I have to disbelieve it. I have to forget it’s true. It isn’t true. The truth is what they’ve been telling us
• Doesn’t it occur to you that the very fact that you’re asking me this question tells me there’s something else for me to figure out, and therefore greatly increases the chance that I will figure it out?
• It was as if Graff had read his heart and found the lie that would penetrate most deeply into his soul and told it to him
• He hadn’t realized how much he needed the honor of others until he finally got it
• What you don’t seem to understand is, sometimes you have to tell people the truth and ask them to do the thing you want, instead of trying to trick them into it
• Sometimes the other side is irresistibly strong, and then the only sensible course of action is to retreat in order to save your force to fight another day
• But he held his tongue, because, in the back of his mind, in the deepest corner of his heart, he still had hope that Ender might do what could not be done
• Yet throughout history, great victories had come as much because of the losing army’s errors as because of the winner’s brilliance in battle
• They’ve never seen us make a move like that. They don’t understand that, yes, humans will always act to preserve their own lives – except for the times when they don’t. In the bugger’s experience, autonomous beings do not sacrifice themselves. Once they understood our autonomy, the seed of their defeat was sown
• He pretended all this time that humans were rational human beings, when we are really the most terrible monsters these poor aliens could ever have conceived of in their nightmares
• Is that what passes for humor with you?
• ”Is your god also their god, sister Carlotta? Did he take them into heaven?” “He’s not my god”
• ”Isn't that what it means to be civilized? That you can wait to get what you want?"
• He luxuriated in the sound of high language well spoken.
• Analyzing things was fine, but good reflexes could save your life.
• ”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."
• It was very important for sister Carlotta to find out where bean came from.. To find out who he really was. Only…he already knew who he really was. He tried to say this to her "I’m right here. This is who I really am. I'm not pretending."
• ”Trying to shock nuns is not much sport. There is no trophy."
• ”God made us with death inside, and also with intelligence. We have our seventy years or so – perhaps ninety, with care – in the mountains of GA, a 130 is not unheard of, though I personally believe they are all liars. They would claim to be immortal if they could get away with it. We could live forever, if we were willing to be stupid the whole time." “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 of 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."
• ”And then he thought: is this how idiots rationalize their stupidity to themselves?"
• These other kids didn't know love when they saw it.
• Know, think, choose, do.
• I’m not stupid!' in [his] experience, that was a sentence never uttered except to prove it’s own inaccuracy.
• She was sure of that. Or at least she hoped it with such fervor that it felt like certainty.

Shadow Of The Hegemon : Book 6

Shadow Puppets : Book 7

Shadow Of The Giant : Book 8

HOMECOMING SAGA

The Memory Of Earth : Book 1

• Nafi knew the rule: when a man acts like a child, he’s boyish, and everyone’s delighted; when a boy acts the same way, he’s childish, and everyone tells him to be a man
• ”I think that I say those things that make people so angry, not because I really mean them, but because I simply thought of a clever way to say them. It’s a kind of art, to think of the perfect way to say and idea, and when you think of it then you have to say it, because words don’t exist until you say them” “A pretty feeble kind of art, Nyef, and I say you should give it up before it gets you killed”
• ”Why wont anyone ever answer my questions?” “Because you never stop asking them and especially because you keep asking them even when it’s clear that nobody knows the answers” “Well how do I know that they don’t know the answer unless I ask?”
• "I’m not in love with [her] because she's the most beautiful young woman [here] and therefore quite possibly in the entire world. I'm in love with her because we can talk together, because of the way she thinks, the sound of her voice, the way she cocks her head to listen to an idea that she doesn't agree with, the way she rests her hand on mine when she's trying to persuade me.
• In the end...oneself is the only person anyone can convince.
• On the beach he had been able to run for the shore. Where do you run to get away from the oversoul? You didn't. You couldn't hide, either - how could you disguise your own thoughts so even you didn't know what you were thinking?
• If she had the power to make him cry because of his love for her, then there was only one possible solution for him: cease loving her. This was the last time she would ever be able to do this to him.
• The picture that emerged was beautiful and terrible at once.
• Here's my throat. I carry no weapon. You could have killed me at any time, even when I knew you were my enemy. Why did you need to deceive me into trusting you first? Were you afraid that death wouldn't bother me enough, unless I felt betrayed?
• ”There's nothing between them anymore. I could see it fall, the last tie of love or even of concern. If he died tonight, she would be content." to Luet this seemed the most terrible of tragedies. Once these two had been joined together in love, or something like love... And yet the last tie between them was broken now. All lost, all gone. Nothing lasted, nothing.
• Permanence was always an illusion, and love was just the disguise that lovers wore to hide the death of their union from each other for a while.
• I will not be tamed, only persuaded. I will not be coerced or led blindly or tricked or bullied - I am willing only to be convinced. If you don't trust your own basic goodness enough to tell me what you're trying to do... Then you're confessing your own moral weakness and I’ll never serve you.
• Wouldn't it have been better to change humanity so it no longer desired to destroy itself?
• If I had taken away the desire for violence then humanity would not have been humanity. Not that human beings need to be violent in order to be human, but if you ever lose the will to control, the will to destroy, then it must be because you choose to lose it. My role was not to force you to be gentle and kind; it was to keep you alive while you decided for yourselves what kind of people you wanted to be.
• He saw them with such better understanding that they took on power and meaning beyond anything in his experience before.
• It all spoke of the willingness of people to hurt each other, the burning passion to control what other people thought and did. So many people, in secret, subtle ways, acted to destroy people - and not just their enemies, either, but also their friends. Destroying them for the pleasure of knowing that they had the power to cause pain. And so few who devoted their lived to building other peoples strength and confidence. So few who were true teachers, genuine mates.
• Is this earth? So beautiful and monstrous? Is this what we were?
• You think my apology means I’m weak. But it doesn't. It means I am trying to learn how to be strong.
• No place is comfortable, when you are waiting for someone else to do a job you think of as your own.
• [He] didn't know what to say. He didn't even know the name for what he was feeling. "I think that I don't know you." she looked at him, a little perplexed. “No that's wrong. I think that I didn't know you before, even though I thought I knew you, and know that I finally know you, I don't really know you at all."
• I was forgetting how it really was, I was remembering it through common, ordinary eyes, I was remembering it as the boy I was before, but now I remember that it wasn't me being weak or me being naked, or anything else that I should be ashamed of.
• Just because you're a fatalist doesn't mean I want to die.
• I believed in my own heart that it was necessary. But I also hated him. Will I ever be sure that I didn't do it because of that hatred, that longing for vengeance? I fear that I will always suspect that I am an assassin in my heart.

The Call Of Earth : Book 2

• ...”The story the oversoul tells me fit’s all the facts that I see. Your story, in which I’m endlessly deceived, can also explain all those facts. I have no way of knowing that your story is not true-but you have no way of knowing that my story isn't true. So I will choose the one that I love. I will close the one that, if it's true, makes this reality one worth living in. I’ll act as if the life I hope for is real life, and the life that disgusts me-your life, your view of life-is the lie."
• Most men were like this - relatively unconnected, unbound, alone. But these men were particularly untrusting and ungiving, and so the bonds that held them to each other was fragile indeed. It was not love at all, really, but rather a yearning for the honor and respect of the other men that held them. Pride, then... Indeed, all their connection with each other at this moment was tied up with the respect they felt they were earning by their actions.
• Is that who I am? A boy who is so weak that he can’t imagine loving a woman who is strong?
• Keep me alive. Keep me alive long enough for me to conquer the animal within myself. Long enough for me to learn to partner myself with a woman who is better and stronger than me. Long enough for me to reconcile myself with my brothers. Long enough to be as good a man as my father, and as good as my mother, too.
• Coincidence is just the word we use when we have not yet discovered the cause. It’s an illusion of the human mind, a way of saying, "I don't know why this happened this was, and I have no intention of finding out.”
• I only exist in this place. I am only human in this place.
• How does he do it? How does he master people without bluster or bullying? How does he make people fear him or love him, not in spite of his ruthlessness but because of it?
• This is love. This is the kind of love that songs and stories are made of.
• We are all fools when one wise man appears.
• ”You know nothing about me at all." “Which is almost certainly true. I know nothing about you. No one knows anything about you."
• Better to listen than speak at a time like this.
• ”You are truly a monster. You speak of sacrilege and massacre of innocents, and then you ask me to trust you." "I speak of necessity, and ask you to help me keep from being a monster."
• Are men's lives nothing but the secretions of overactive glands?
• [He] was young, too young to see the consequences of his actions, too young to contain his feelings.
• Has life left you so hungry that you'll swallow even the poor imitation of love?
• It’s tragic isn't it, that we don't always get what we want in this world.
• Stop threatening me... I've lived in terror and I’ve come out of it. Kill me or not, torture me or not, it doesn't matter to me. Just decide what to do.
• Will I be coming to you as husband or a child? A partner or a student?
• In all his life, [he] had never spoken with such brutal frankness about his own fear; he had never felt so exposed and vulnerable in front of anyone.
• That was all she needed - was for him to tell her he didn't expect her to be the waterseer all the time, that he was marrying the fragile, imperfect human being, and not the overpowering image she inadvertently put on.
• She never finished the sentence, because at that moment [he] began to learn how to kiss a woman, and she, though she had never kissed a man before, became his tutor.
• ”How do you know you're right and were wrong?" "I don't know"
• Real power does not demonstrate itself in anything that can be purchased in mere money. Money only buys the illusion of power. Real power is in the force of will - will strong enough that others bend to it for it’s own sake, and follow it willingly. Power that is won through deception will evaporate under the hot light of truth, as more closely you look at it, even when it resides only in a single person, without armies, without servants, without friends, but with indomitable will.
• 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.

The Ships Of Earth : Book 3

• ”Don’t force the issue, don’t force Nafai to humiliate you in front of the others. Instead work with him, and he will gladly let you take as much of the leadership as the oversoul will let him surrender to you. I don’t think you’ve ever realize how Nafai worships you. How he has always wished he could be like you. How he has longed for your love and respect more than that of any other person” ‘get out of my house” “Very well. I see that you are a person who refuses to revise his view of the world. You can only bear to live in a world where all the bad things that happen to you are someone else’s fault, where everyone must have conspired against you to deprive you of what is your due. Unfortunately, that world happens not to be the real world
• "I hate it when you back away from a quarrel like that." "I don't like conflict." “But you always back off at the exact moment when you're about to tell the other person exactly what she needs to hear."
• If there's one thing our group is too small to endure, it’s sexual tension
• ”The others are even more likely to obey their god" “Which is?" “It dangles between their legs"
• It isn't a question of what you need. It never is. It’s a question of what he needs. He needs to feel superior to you.
• ”Odd isn't it, that physically plain people are perfectly able to see physical beauty in others, while people who are morally maimed are blind to goodness and decency. They honestly think it doesn’t exist" “Oh they know it exists all right. They just never know which people have it."
• You're so certain that you can hold people to their commitments. No ones ever made them do that before. Can you now?
• He fears his own murderous heart so much that he won't let himself think of his whole plan openly
• She understands my heart better than you do, and I can speak her thoughts almost before she speaks them
• Does [he] imagine that I could desire a mere woman, when [she] is my wife?
• Love and respect have nothing to do with controlling what other people do
• To face death, that’s nothing much. But to feel really stupid when you die, well, that would be insufferable.
• The old fear and strangeness remained as an undercurrent, despite all her attempts to reassure herself. Until now, seeing him, she realized she was not afraid of him..... No she was afraid of what he would think of her - an even older and darker fear
• Show him who I am, help him to see that even though I am no beauty, I’m still a woman, I still long to love, to be loved, to make a family with a man who is bound into my heart
• Show him who I am, so he will pity me instead of fearing me. And then we can turn pity into compassion, and compassion into understanding, and understanding into affection, and affection into love, and love into life, the life of our children, the life of the new self we will become together
• Could she help it that she has been given a combination of genes that gave her an extraordinary memory, an enormous capacity for grasping and understanding ideas, and a mind that was able to make connections that no one else could see?
• It’s not as if she chose to do mental gymnastics beyond the reach of anyone she had ever met in person.
• ”You take responsibility for us all. Without ever waiting to be told." “So do all good people. That's what it means to be a good person. And I am a good person."
• I interpreted all you did as weakness - but I should have known that it was wisdom and strength, freely shared with all of us, even the ones who don't deserve it.
• Never mind. Put it back where it belongs, in memory, not in the forefront of thought
• Doesn’t love show it’s face when it satisfies the need of the loved one, for the loved one's sake alone?
• Nature had no scheme. Only a series of accidents.
• I’m not a very demanding man. I don't expect perfection from others. I get along and do my part. But when someone treats me like a worm, as if I didn't exist, as if I didn't matter, then I don't forget, no, I never forget, I never forgive, I simply bide my time and then they see: I do matter, and despising me was the gravest error of their lives
• Such children. So young, so playful. I’m glad they can still be that way. Someday, when the real adult responsibilities settle on them, they’ll lose that. It will be replaces by a slower, quieter kind of play. But for now, they can cast away care and remember how good it is to be alive.... That's what happiness means, isn't it?
• ”Maybe he’s growing up" “Or maybe he just needed the right circumstances to discover the best in himself."
• Maybe we're like the baboons. When we're stable and civilized, the women decide things, establish the households, the connections between them, create the neighborhoods and the friendships. But when we're nomadic, living lives on the edge of survival, men rule, and brook no interference from the women. Perhaps that's what civilization means - is the dominance of the female over the male/ and wherever that lapses, we call the result uncivilized, barbarian ... Manly.
• Any unhappiness that they might harbor in their hearts was kept in check, buried under the hard work that marked the rhythms of their lives, and then dissolved in the moments when joy was bountiful and love unstinted
• She began to understand things she had never understood before. The world was not as clear and simple a place as she had thought till now.
• Adults [are] so strange
• Individual people have always been more important to her than to me. It’s my weakness, that I don't have her awareness of other people's feelings
• Maybe what we really want is for our children to be the dominant ones! Maybe I’m trying to see my own ambitions fulfilled in them, and that would be wrong, so I should be content with what they are.
• Wasting our time? This is a waste of time, to live in peace and plenty with my wife and children? May I waste the rest of my life, then.
• I acted like a human male. When I act like a human male it doesn’t make me less human, it just makes me less female. Don't you ever tell me again that just because I don't act like a woman wants me to act, that makes me an animal.
• She of all people should have known that it was his desire to be a hero that impelled him now, it was his passion to find out what would happen next, to make the next thing happen. She, if she loved him, should have understood
• The barrier was only in my mind - which is true of this barrier as well. The more firmly I try to cross the barrier, the more firmly I’m rejected. Well, maybe it’s the intention to cross the boundary that pushes me away
• I see that you are a person who refuses to revise his view of the would. You can only bear to live in a world where all the bad things happen to you are someone else's fault, where everyone must have conspired against you to deprive you of your due. Unfortunately, that world happens not to be the real world
• He hated you for being yourself, because you were so similar to him, and yet so different. The only way you could have kept him from hating you would have been to die young
• Just because you live every waking moment with dreams of controlling other people doesn’t mean the rest of us do
• Let there be no barrier between us... My love. I never want to be alone again

Earthfall : Book 4

• 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.
• I knew you’d say that, that's why I hate you
• You're still young so you still think the whole universe revolves around you. But the fact is that it doesn’t
• You don't understand everything, but you still make decisions. Well, we don't understand everything, either. But we decided didn't we? And we made the right choice, didn't we?
• Frozen, right? But to others, it looks like you're calm as could be. That's why some of the others tease you so mercilessly sometimes. They thing you're made of stone, and they want to break in and touch the human feelings. They just don't know that when you seem most stony, that's when you're the most frightened and breakable.
• Like when you wake up in the middle of the night with a very important idea from a dream, and you writed it down and then in the morning it says 'Not the food! The dog!' and you have no idea what that could possibly mean or why you once thought it was important.
• People can be happy together
• That proves you're a decent person who would never tell a lie.
• That's what survival means, for me. I thought it was a matter of staying alive, but it isn't. Nobody lives forever anyway. It’s how you're remembered. It’s what your children thought of you, what they think of you after you're dead. That's survival. And if there's one thing that can truly be said about me, it’s this: I survive.
• May the day when you need courage never come even as she said it, though, she knew the day would come.
• You're the only one that I would be glad to be close to forever, because all your secrets are bright and good and I love you for them
• Those bonds aren't bondage at all... They’re freedom
• Religion isn't always pretty. Especially viewed from the outside, by an unbeliever.
• He realized now he simply hated them, even when by chance they were silent. He hated the way they treated women. He hated the way they treated men. He hated the way they thought. He hated the way they didn't think. It was hard to imagine which of them he hated more.
• We all had a better idea. We all knew that you were wrong. We knew it from the beginning
• We never know when you will stop. And so we obey you when you're angry and irrational, because we're afraid of you. And if you think about it without letting rage cloud your reason, you'll realize that we have cause to be afraid
• He knew she meant it. Everyone knew she meant it, and everyone knew what she said was true. Everyone had know it for years.
• Maybe I took the first step toward healing him
• Smart, but not smart-mouthed; obedient, but willing to take the initiative; courageous, but not foolish; confident, but not boastful.
• What cannot be healed has been healed. What was lost forever has been found. Therefore let that which cannot be forgiven be forgiven.
• People are what they want to be
• ”You’d think, from the way you talk, that people were responsible for their own behavior" “And they’re not?" “Haven't you ever seen a 3 year old when he makes a foolish blunder? He looks at whatever child or adult is nearby and screams at him 'look at what you made me do!' that's the moral universe that [they] always lived in"
• Sometimes those who care for the whole community must act in a way that harms the individual. For a good man it never becomes easy and he avoids it when he can; but when people need him to be harsh, he will be harsh indeed, and he won't shrink from it, he'll do it with his own hand and let it be known what he does.
• Wishful thinking gives false gods to people who hunger for gods, but those who yearn for a world with no gods are no less likely to fall victim to their own wishful thinking
• He simply learned how to be patient. How to bide his time.
• ”[They] aren't humans" “When it comes to hate and rage and envy, yes they are" “And love and generosity, too. And trust and wisdom and dignity and -" “Yes, they’re humans in all those ways"
• Why has my life turned out to be so worthless?
• All it did was let her step off that brink into the dark unknown with a smile on her face and pride in her heart. It made death sweet to her.
• I don't think what they made between them was what you or I would understand as friendship
• In another time, he would have flown into a rage at those words, would have blustered and threatened, or lashed out in fury. But he was a different man now, a tempered man, a man of discipline and quiet, ruthless wisdom.
• Don't you know... That I love you? Don't you know that I don't want to live without you?
• I don't mind dying before you do. In fact, I rather prefer it that way
• Men seemed to find an obscene amount of pleasure in having the upper hand, in winning
• We're going to have to have a long talk about priorities before long
• You were such a promising boy. Of all the tragedies this lifelong war between brothers has caused, you are the saddest one of all

Earthborn : Book 5

• [He] never claims to know what he doesn’t know. When he’s unsure, he says so. When he’s sure, he’s always right
• ”How can we ever know what’s true?” “We can’t. That’s what I figured out a long time ago.” “So you don’t believe in anything?” “I believe in everything that seems true to me right now. I just refuse to be surprised when some of those things I believe in now turn out to be false later. It helps keep me from being upset”
• ”To remember is real. To imagine is nothing” “That’s silly... Most of the things people say they remember they only imagine anyways”
• We all choose our own teachers, don’t we? I wonder if our choice of teacher shows anything about what our lives will be
• ”You have a will of steel” “And a heart of glass. Brittle and cold”
• Today, I saw a spark of decency. Lets blow on that spark and give it fuel
• We can wash people in the water all we want, but we can never wash their parents out of their hearts
• Out of respect for custom he treats me as if all women were equally worthless. He gives custom more respect than he gives me
• He isn’t insane, he’s simply as trapped in his life as I am in mine. That makes us friends
• Friends, a man and a woman. It was possible
• What difference does it make, whether we keep our silence because [they] force us or because we’re afraid they might force us?
• I’ll be dead and you’ll think about this day and wonder which of us was more the slave, you or me!
• Humans feel compassion primarily for those they conceive of as being part of themselves
• Humans had to evolve what no other primate had: a sense of identity with a group so powerful that it could swallow up the individual identity, at least to a large degree. Humans couldn’t have the deep, self-sacrificing loyalty to more than one or two communities at a time. Thus communities were inevitably in conflict with each other, competing for the loyalty of their members. The tribe had to break down the solidarity of the family; religion had to compete with nation for loyalty. But once a community had that loyalty, the most ardent members would gladly die for it. Not for the other individuals directly, but for the interests of the group as a whole, because in the human mind, that group was the self, and the individual was able to regard himself as merely one iteration of the pattern of the whole
• Humans, in order to rise above the animals, had learned how to convert themselves into nothing more than organs or limbs or even disposable fingernails and hair of a larger metaphorical organism
• Everything I ever felt myself to be a part of is dead
• Again, as so many times before, [he] felt tears come to his eyes. But he fought them off - he was getting better at that, hiding his true feelings. Though of course sitting up here... Certainly made it plain that he wasn’t happy about something
• Will you shut up about your envy of [them]? For one day, for one hour, for one minute will you just stop and give a thought to reality?
• Maybe if I could bear my life as it is for one day, for one hour, for one minute, I could forget my wish to be something else
• I have no secret thoughts... Or rather, they’re not secret because I’ve withheld them - if they’re unknown, it’s because no one asked
• You smile. Why, because you succeeded in provoking me?
• You’re the teacher, you’re the master, you know everything, I am your puppet
• Because you’re really, really sure doesn’t that mean you’re right?
• Boys always argued as if they knew then had the forces of logic on their side, even when they were being completely irrational. Even when their “Logic” defied the evidence
• After discussions like this, the boys would turn around and talk about how girls weren’t reasonable, they were emotional, you couldn’t even have an intelligent conversation with them - but it was the boys who fled from the evidence and constantly shifted their arguments to fit what they wanted to believe. And it was [she] who was ruthlessly realistic, refusing to deny her own feelings or the facts that she observed around her. And refusing to deny that she reached her conclusions first, because of her inmost desires, and only afterward constructed the arguments to support them. Only boys were so foolish that they actually believed their arguments were their reasons
• If you don’t want to control what I think, why did you raise your voice? Why did you argue with me at all?
• He would know what was right. Yet with his marvelous gift of knowing right from wrong, why couldn’t he realize that his yearning to be something other than himself was hopelessly wrong, was wasting his life and poisoning his heart?
• ”Does a son betray his father?” “If a father commands a son to commit a crime so terrible that the son can’t do it and live with himself, then is it betrayal for the son to disobey his father?”
• ”You always do that. Make all the questions harder” “I make them truer”
• I don’t care if it’s the whole world that everything in it, on it, and above it. I...will...not...bend.
• It was a mark of their naiveté, to think that such a revolution could be accomplished so easily
• Children are nothing but tools of their parents
• In their ignorance, they were happy
• Don’t be too anxious to control other people’s ideas
• There are many things that men and women do not say, because to say them would only bring unhappiness
• Law can change how people behave when others are watching - that’s all
• I know how it feels to have driven all compassion out of my heart and laugh at the pain of someone else
• False modesty is still false, no matter how charming it might seem
• [He] smiled at once, his most winning and charming smile, and it worked as it always worked, suggesting as it did a sort of self-effacing humility, a believable protests of innocence, and a promise of friendship - whatever good thing the other person wish to read into it
• [He] always wondered at that smile even as it triumphed over his own anger or envy. Where could such a power over others come from?
• How does he do that?
• I think that many things can come into someone’s mind out of hysteria
• I want you to discover the truth for yourself. I don’t ram it down your throats like some do
• Clever boys. They’ll do it, if we give them half a chance. They will do it
• Don’t you hate it when somebody knows you better than you know yourself?
• There was once a man who knew me better than I knew myself. Who saw strength in me that I didn’t know was there
• I realized it wouldn’t do [him] any good to have a bunch of puppets doing his will. What he wants is companions. Do you see? He wants us to become like him, to want the same things he wants. To work towards the same goals, freely and willingly, because we want to
• That’s one of those questions, whether human beings are really capable of change, or if all seeming changes are really a matter of framing the existing character in a different moral situation...you know
• So we can discuss things as equals. That would never be possible with them - they’re too young. They haven’t lived
• Which is the greater wrong? To hurt the unforgiving one, or hurt the one who has forgiven all?
• ”Why don’t you say what you’re thinking?" “What makes you think you want to hear it?” “Because the way you looked at me... I knew what you were thinking was, I love her, I want her beside me forever, I want her to be my wife, and ... I tell you honestly, I’m sick and tired of waiting for you to say it outloud” “What! Why should I tell you what you already know?” “Because I need to hear it”
• It occurred to me that if my friends were loathsome, perhaps I needed to learn from my enemies
• I want to change me heart and I don’t know how
• Wanting to is the whole lesson; all the rest is practice
• For 2 people to love each other, they have to meet, don’t they? And 2 people who live in utterly different worlds have no chance of meeting
• What you call intellectual honesty I call self-deception
• [He] had no illusions - the doctrine he was going to be teaching, starting tonight, was not the sort of ideology that would stir souls; no one would die for this religion. It would only attracts converts by promising a return to old tradition and by seeming to be the religion of the future
• It seems that the more I learn, the less I know. While the more ignorant remain absolutely certain of their convictions
• Hatred and anger aren’t rational
• Just because you know I had no other choice doesn’t make the anger go away. I understand that. But you’re a man now. You can put away these childish things
• Make sure the people understand they won’t be required to sacrifice anything in order to belong to your assembly. A religion that is all sweetness, but no light; all form, but no substance; all tradition, but no precept
• ”Someone has to be an audience for the play you people are always improvising. All of you trying for the center stage. All of you trying to get the audience to notice you, to declare you the star, so that when you die, the curtain will come down and the show will end. But it never does. No one was the star after all” “That’s the difference between life and art, of course. Life has no frames, no curtains, no beginnings and no endings” “Which should imply that it has no meaning” “I mean my own life. I mean what I do”
• I know what you do... I know why you do it. I can name you more truly than you can name yourself

TALES OF ALVIN MAKER

Seventh Son : Book 1

• ”Everything possible to be believed is an image of the truth."
• So if the evil he had done wasn’t the death of the roaches, what was it? The power he had? His knack for making things go just where he wanted, making them break just in the right place, understanding how things ought to be and helping them get that way?
• That kiss and all it held – hope, forgiveness, love – let me never forget that
• [He] put a great deal of trust in the sort of man who spoke his mind to all men, even strangers, even enemies
• I always tell what I believe. Whether it’s true, I’m no more sure than any man
• A man always assumes that others are as virtuous as himself
• Don’t ask me questions when I don’t even know the answer myself
• Hiding from your enemy is the same as letting him win
• Sunday morning, he decided, is designed to let sinners have a sample of the first day of eternity in hell
• ”Everything possible to be believed is an image of truth” and the words did pierce him, and he understood them, though he could not have put in words what it was he understood. Everything possible to be believed is an image of truth. If it feels true to me, then there is something true in it, even if it isn’t all true. And if I study it out in my mind, then maybe I can find what parts of it are true, and what parts are false, and - and Alvin realized something else. That all his arguments with thrower came down to this : that if something just plain didn’t make sense to Alvin, he didn’t believe it, and no amount of quoting from the bible would convince him. Now Taleswapper was telling him that he was right to refuse to believe things that make no sense “Taleswapper, does that mean that what I don’t believe can’t be true? “Truth can never be told as to be understood, and not be believed”
• To my way of thinking, a duel is just two murderers who agree to take turns trying to kill each other

Red Prophet : Book 2

• And it came into hooch's mind that when both parties are lying and they both know the other party's lying, it comes powerfully close to being the same thing as telling the truth.
• But the fear of death in the one place was not as strong as another kind of fear, the fear of a world gone crazy, a place where anything could happen, where nothing could be trusted, where nothing was certain. A terrible place.
• It was like a bunch of children, doing something they knew they shouldn’t ought to, and then their pa comes along and catches them at it. Having been caught in such mischief himself sometimes, he almost felt a little sympathy
• 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
• We’ve seen the worst that men can do, pa, and been the worst that men can be. But that don’t mean that someday we wont see the best, too. And if we can never be perfect after this, well, we can still be pretty good, can’t we?
• ”They didn’t have to believe in you. They didn’t have to choose to die.” “But they didn’t know that’s what they was choosing” “They knew. We always know. We don’t admit it to ourselves, not until the very moment of death, but in that moment, we see all the life before us and we understand how we chose, every day of our lives, the manner of our death”

Prentice Alvin : Book 3

• Peggy couldn’t tell the truth. She knew these folks too well. She knew what they all were scared of, what they all wanted, what they all had done that they’d kill her or theirself if they once got a notion that she knew. Even the ones who never done a bad thing, they’d be so ashamed to think she knew their secret dreams or private craziness. So she never could speak frankly to these folks, or something would slip out, not even a word maybe, it might be just the way she turned her head, the way she sidestepped some line of talk, and they’d know that she knew, or just fear that she knew, or just fear. Just fear alone, without even naming what it was, and it could undo them, some of them, the weakest of them
• Perhaps all that some men need from a woman is for her to be loving and wise and careful, like a field of flowers where he can play the butterfly, drawing sweetness from her blossoms
• A woman’s wisdom is her gift to women. Her beauty is her gift to men. Her love is her gift to god
• ”So why do you intend to inflict your wisdom on this poor unfortunate man you say you love?” “Because some men are great enough that they can love a whole woman, and not just part of her”
• Was it worth it? To lose part of who he had been in order to live free? Perhaps this new self was better than the old
• No one is the same person today that he was yesterday. No one had a body as young as it was, or a heart so naïve, or a head so ignorant as it was
• In a way, he lost some of himself, some of his knack, and therefore some of the choices he might have had in life. But in losing those, he gained so much more freedom, so much more power, that he was clear winner in the bargain
• He’d find out soon enough what losing everything could mean
• Alvin saw how measure was with Delphi. She wasn’t a noticeably pretty girl, though not particular ugly either; she was strong and stout and laughed loud as a donkey. But Alvin saw how measure had a way of looking at her like the most beautiful sight he ever could see. She’d look up and there he’d be, watching her with a kind of dreamy smile on his face, and shed laugh or blush or look away, but for a minute or two she’d move more graceful, walking partly on her toes maybe, like she was dancing, or getting set to fly. Alvin wondered then if he could ever give such a look to Miss. Larner as would make her so full of joy that she couldn’t hardly stay connected to the earth
• ”Who is she?” “Who?” “The one you love till it takes your breath away just remembering”
• Somewhere there was a woman he could love and live with till he died

Alvin Journeyman : Book 4

• ...All of a sudden they both felt their arms pretty near wrenched right out of their sockets and then they were dragged around, grabbed by the collars, and smacked together so hard their noses bled and they saw stars.
• ”You're lucky I took me a vow of nonviolence," said mike fink, “Or you'd be suffering some pain right now."
• 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?
• ”I knew you could shed that folksy talk the minute you wanted to” “Yes, I can do that. Just as I can speak French to a Frenchman and Spanish to a Spaniard and four kinds of red talk depending on which tribe I’m with. But you, do you speak scorn and mockery to everyone? Or just to your betters?”
• A liar sees lies, even when they aren’t there. Just as a hypocrite sees hypocrites whenever he runs across good people. Can’t stand to think that anyone might really be what you only pretend to be
• 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
• When people say perhaps its cause they’re lying. Either they don’t believe the thing they’re saying, or they do believe it only they don’t want to admit they do
• You spend you’re whole life grieving for those who haven’t died yet
• Alvin wondered if it was true – if all men had evil in their hearts, and those men as were good, maybe they were simply the ones who controlled theirselves so well they could act contrary to their heart’s desire. But if that were so, then no man was good, not one
• ”Our savior is guard enough for us all” “Our savior will resurrect us, but I haven’t noticed that Christians end up any less dead at the end of life than heathens”

Heartfire : Book 5

The Crystal City : Book 6

WOMEN OF GENESIS

Sarah

Rebekah

Rachel And Leah

An Open Book

The Abyss

Enchantment

• Was she being ironic? Vanya had never been able to guess about mother
• In Vanya’s family, silence had never meant surrender, only tactical retreat
• Is there any hope that you can explain to me why this makes sense?
• Before the story he refused to even think about it; after the story, it became conceivable to him, and, once he could conceive of it, it soon became inevitable
• ”You’re not losing me, mother. I’m in love.” ”I never had you, not since you escaped from the womb”
• More than likely, mother would simply go enigmatic on him, give him one of her inscrutable smiles, and tell him that if he didn’t already understand, he never would
• Women always said things like that, and it made him crazy. It’s as if every conversation with a woman was a test, and men always failed it, because they always lacked the key to the code and so they never quite understood what the conversation was really about. If, just once, the man could understand, really comprehend the whole of the conversation, then the perfect union between male and female would be possible. But instead men and women continued to cohabit, even to love each other, without ever quite crossing over the chasm of misunderstanding between them
• Esther tuned out their conversation and thought about Vanya, about how strange it was that this other woman, this girl-child, should speak of her son so possessively, should speak of his future as if it were her own future
• There was majesty in the child, and only banality in this marriage…marriage is about banality. Its purpose is banality, to create an environment of surpassing safety and predictability for young children to grow up in, the foundation of life, the root of inner peace. What do I want for him, a troublesome, restless woman? A queen?
• This is why so many knights have died. This is why troy fell, for a woman like this
• I don’t know you, ma’am, and apparently I’m expected to die for you
• Was his very boyishness the reason he was chosen? In that case, was it not a virtue to be admired, and not a failing to be despised?
• You know nothing at all about men like me
• Living with a god is not what it’s cracked up to be. They think their women should be grateful just to have them around
• He was not happy. And, if Ivan was any judge of character, neither was Katerina. Relieved, yes, she seemed to be relieved. As if one great hurdle had been passed. But Ivan knew that this was nothing to her but a marriage for reasons of the state. She had grown up knowing such a thing would be needed. He had not. He always expected to marry for love, or at least by his own choice. He had hoped for a bride who would be proud to say the vows with him. This was dismal indeed, to know that she was merely doing her duty to king and country, to god and daddy
• Numb – that’s just the feeling you hope for on your wedding night
• Why are you raising your voice to me, if not to command?
• ”Don’t hurt each other any more, children” “How could I hurt her? She’d have to love me before I could do that”
• Don’t you love her? This beauty, this bright and powerful woman?
• When he offered to annul the marriage, he realized now, he had been half-hoping that she’d refuse, that she’d insist that she wanted to be his wife. Instead, he had provoked this outburst, in which she had exposed the full measure of her contempt for him
• I hurt him again. I meant to pretend to love him, but in the moment I simply told the truth, which is my habit. And I don’t know that I want to change that habit. You can tell a lie now and then. But what happens to you when you try to live your whole life inside a lie?
• She focused completely, almost smolderingly, on Ruth. But there was a sense of amusement in everything she said. A sense of irony. I know something you don’t know
• But charm, intelligence, and good looks, did they add up to love?
• The embarrassment on all their faces. How inconvenient of her, to lay it on the line like this. To demand they face up to whatever was obvious to all of them. Oh, is this making you uncomfortable? You poor dears
• If he wants you, then I don’t want him. The man I loved wouldn’t have gotten married without bothering to break off his previous engagement. So whatever you’ve got there with his arm attached to your back. It’s not a man I ever knew or ever wanted. Somebody else, somebody faithless. I deserve better. So save your tears for yourself. Bitch
• Some memories don’t fade, some physical memories are forever. The feel of your fathers hand, the sound of your mothers voice. Only, father’s hand was smaller now. No, Ivan’s was larger, but to him, it was his father who had shrunk, who no longer had the power of the giant, of the god, to enfold him and keep him safe.
• ”I don’t like the thought of you being married to a woman who always thinks she married down” “That’s a problem isn’t it? But the truth is, she did” “No. No, that’s not true. There is no woman alive who, marrying you, would be marrying down” ”I thought – that’s a thing that mother would say” “Yes. Mothers say things like that more than fathers do”
• He was close to her hour after hour, the smell of her, the touch of her breath on the hairs of his arms or on his ears as she leaned over his shoulder to watch. He thought sometimes he might go insane with desire for her; but he could not think of a way to change what lay between them, and though he thought she liked him well enough now, he still didn’t know if their friendship was yet the thing a marriage should be made of. Do you love me? He wanted to ask her, to demand of her. But fearing the answer would be a wan “I’m sorry, Ivan,” he did not speak
• I trust you because I’ve come to know you, and coming to know you, I’ve learned to love you. I’ve fallen in love with your boldness, your humility, your innocence, your kindness, your willingness. I know that you will stand by me as best you can. But you don’t know what my husband needs to know. You can’t do what my husband needs to do. I can trust your heart, your king’s heart, but your mind doesn’t know what it needs to know, your hands don’t have in them the skills they need to have. I had no choice but to marry you. But little by little I have come to long for you to include me within the circle of your arms, of your mind, of your pure love. To embrace me, to give me babies I was born to have, to help me raise them. And I don’t care which world we raise them in, yours or mine or some other we haven’t seen yet
• ”All I could think of was how close I came to losing you” not close enough. How could you lose me, when you’ve never had me, never wanted me?
• As long as no one said anything, he could pretend that it was love. That she felt about him as he felt about her
• And then [he] wondered why he would think of such a useless question at a time like this
• Gloating is a great joy, isn’t it? To have your enemy in your power – there’s nothing sweeter is there?
• ”Your mother surrounds you every moment," she said. "I know, because I feel her love for you in my own arms, around you now."
• Having never been in control of his own life, his idea of freedom was simply to break free
• In the absence of understanding, that was a good a reason as any for living together and making babies and raising them up and throwing them out of the house and then going through the long slow decline together until one of them died and left the other alone again, understanding as little as ever about what their spouses really wanted, who they really were. Was that tragedy? Or was that comedy? Was there really any difference?
• That was the way communication was among women, most of the time; few women realized it, but they all dep