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...
Only assholes put a nickname on their business card.
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.
Dad lost his job. Then he got a new job. Then he got his old job back and went back to it. They were all in the same building.
An intense copper calm, like a universal yellow lotus, was more and more unfolding its noiseless measureless leaves upon the sea.
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...
Isn't that what it means to be civilized? That you can wait to get what you want?
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...
Poke gave him life. Ender gave it meaning.
You were not there for the beginning. You will not be there for the end. Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative
The only teacher that's worth anything to you is your enemy.
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 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.
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...
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....
War is now a form of TV entertainment
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...
We're all ghosts. We all carry, inside us, people who came before us.
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.
The Success Formula: Every Skill You Acquire Doubles Your Odds of Success
What is most important is to cease legislating for all lives what is liveable only for some, and similarly, to refrain from proscribing for all lives what is unlivable for some.
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...
Reading a novel is not an exercise in censure.
The gospel is far greater than most of us imagine.
Cancer... the process of creation gone wild, I thought.
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.
Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves
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 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...
Heaven have mercy on us all-Presbyterians and Pagans alike- for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.
What could you do? Major Major asked himself again. What could you do with a man who looked you...
We all had to pay, but not for the crimes we were accused of. There were other scores to settle.
If I turned towards books, it was because they were the only sanctuary I knew, one I needed in order...
Hope for some means its loss for others; when the hopeless regain some hope, those in power--the...
The Red Lion was a four-ale bar with a handful of lowbrowed sons of toil who looked as though they...
if you don't understand something, you can't approximate it. You're really just guessing.
Why are they going to disappear him? I don't know. It doesn't make sense. It isn't even good...
Read me back the last line. 'Read me back the last line,' read back the corporal who could take...
Keep in mind that when we talk of a great painting we are not really talking about anything great....
