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We lived in a culture that denied any merit to literary works, considering them important only when they were handmaidens to something seemingly more urgent-namely ideology. This was a country where...

Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy. There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that...

An intense copper calm, like a universal yellow lotus, was more and more unfolding its noiseless measureless leaves upon the sea.

Only assholes put a nickname on their business card.

I've always kept the pleasurable habit of college times, stressing tickets and notes. Much of my notes of pride and prejudice, the heiress, the hill of the howling winds, Madame Bovary and Tom Jones...

she explained why all the normal acts of life had become small acts of rebellion and political insubordination to her and to other young people like her. All her life she was shielded. She was never...

You cannot write if you do not read, the blind man said. You cannot eat if you do not chew. And you cannot play if you do not-he grabbed for the boy's hand-listen.

the waiter came, bringing the second course, pollo con ajillo, chicken with garlic. they would both stink frightfully when they were through, miss shaw thought; she would have to remember to buy some...

It takes courage to die for a cause, but also to live for one.

Poke gave him life. Ender gave it meaning.

Parents always make their worst mistakes with their oldest children. That's when parents know the least and care the most, so they're more likely to be wrong and also more likely to insist that...

As life goes on, you will join other bands, some through friendship, some through romance, some through neighborhoods, school, an army. Maybe you will all dress the same, or laugh at your own private...

Isn't that what it means to be civilized? That you can wait to get what you want?

I don't care if I pass your test, I don't care if I follow your rules. If you can cheat, so can I. I won't let you beat me unfairly - I'll beat you unfairly first.- Ender

The Success Formula: Every Skill You Acquire Doubles Your Odds of Success

Talking to a reporter these days was like a deadly chess match; you had to think several steps ahead; you had to imagine all the possible ways a reporter might distort your statement. The atmosphere...

Used to be - in the old days - the media image roughly corresponded to reality. But now it's all reversed. The media image is the reality, and by comparison day-to-day life seems to lack excitement....

Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.

In my view, suicide is not really a wish for life to end.'What is it then?'It is the only way a powerless person can find to make everybody else look away from his shame. The wish is not to die, but...

Reading a novel is not an exercise in censure.

The further I wake into this life, the more I realize that God is everywhere and the extraordinary is waiting quietly beneath the skin of all that is ordinary. Light is in both the broken bottle and...

Cancer... the process of creation gone wild, I thought.

Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves

We're all ghosts. We all carry, inside us, people who came before us.

I get to the back of the house, I damn near tear the door off the hinges. It isn't an act of fury, fury isn't part of it anymore. It's more deliberate than fury yet more instinctive than deliberation.

Heaven have mercy on us all-Presbyterians and Pagans alike- for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.

... an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.

Unable to decipher or understand everything that was complicated or outside the box, infuriated with those who considered snakes within, the fundamentalists were forced to impose their rudimentary...

Alcohol provokes stupidity; opium provokes wisdom.

We all know that it is women who make the decisions, but we have to let men think that the decisions are theirs. It is an act of kindness on the part of women.

There is a reason God limits man's days.

I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not "true" because we're hungry for another kind of truth: the mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth...

I like to smile at the men who look mean so they know I believe in their better selves. That makes a difference in the world. This is how you might be able to reform a possible rapist without ever...