Orson Scott Card quote: "Ender nodded. It was a lie, of course, that it wouldn’t hurt a bit. But since adults always said it when it was going to hurt, he could count on that statement as an accurate prediction of the future. Sometimes lies were more dependable than the truth."

I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it.
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Do not shout at me, Mr. Quill," said John [Adams]. "Justice may be blind, but she is not deaf.
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In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in th...
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We humans do, when the cause is sufficient, spend our lives. We throw ourselves onto the grenade to ...
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So the whole war is because we can't talk to each other.
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What else should you be? Human beings didn't evolve brains in order to lie around on lakes. Killing'...
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If only we were wiser or better people, perhaps the gods would explain to us the mad, unbearable thi...
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Among my most prized possessions are words that I have never spoken.
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Of course, I also hear from critics who detest what I do, and while sometimes I feel rather proud of...
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Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books.
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...it seemed a part of her life, to step from the ancient to the modern, back and forth. She felt ra...
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Are you the strongest of all men, so strong that you can be merciful to me, a weak woman? Here is th...
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It's the middle class that feels the luxury of being able to have causes.
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Of course they accused Marcão of having done it without provocation—that’s the way of torturers...
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I will remember this, thought Ender, when I am defeated. To keep dignity, and give honor where it's ...
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So you love me," said Petra softly when the kiss ended.

I'm a raging mass of hormones the...
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None of us could be happy for long, doing nothing.
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But in the military you don't get trusted positions just because of your ability. You also have to a...
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Are you the strongest of all men, so strong that you can be merciful to me, a weak woman? Here is th...
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As long as you keep getting born, it's alright to die some times.
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So from then on, he looked at all his choices and said, What would a good person do, and then did it...
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Twisted and perverse are the ways of the human mind," Jane intoned. "Pinocchio was such a dolt to tr...
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This is the Speaker for the Dead? Judging someone by appearances?"
"Maybe I've fallen in love...
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[T]hat's the way of torturers of every age, to put the blame on the victim, especially when he strik...
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I didn't want to see you."
"They told me."
"I was afraid that I'd still love you."
"I...
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I taught you everything you know. But I didn't teach you everything I know.
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the seed of doubt was there, and it stayed, and every now and then sent out a little root. It change...
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The essence of training is to allow error without consequence.
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I'm crazy," said Ender. "But I think I'm OK.
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Grief, she reminded herself, is almost always for the mourner's loss.
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The only way to retrieve a secret,once known, is to replace it with a lie.
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I think you don't grow up until you stop worrying about other people's purposes or lack of them and ...
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Stories are invented as you go along...
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But if you caught my informant,' said Achilles, 'why in the world would Chamrajnagar—or Graff, if ...
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I need to find out if I'm as good at peace as I am at war
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I'll become exactly the tool you want me to be, said Ender silently, but at least I wont be fooled i...
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I love you Ender. More than ever. No matter what you decide.
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Don't launch it," said Bean into his microphone, head down. "Set it off inside your ship. God be wit...
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He didn't feel that way about anybody. You just live in the place you're in, you don't worry about w...
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Once you get a brother, you don’t give him up easy.
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Death is not a tragedy to the one who dies; to have wasted the life before that death, that is the t...
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And then he thought: Is this how idiots rationalize their stupidity to themselves?
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One bachelor is an irritation. Ten thousand bachelors are a war.
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Oh no, real life is escape. The great terrors, the horrors--we hope--of your life come from reading ...
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Life is full of grief, to exactly the degree we allow ourselves to love other people.
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What could go wrong... Doing some stupid impulsive thing that caused the death of drowthers was prac...
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Too many people in the American media have lost any concept of loyalty to their country -- if they e...
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Even the most evil of men and women, if you understand their hearts, had some generous act that rede...
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It was just him and me. He fought with honor. If it weren't for his honor, he and the others would h...
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Unemployment is capitalism's way of getting you to plant a garden.
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Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to be ...
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I hope I am remembered by my children as a good father.
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There is more good writing and good acting in any ten minutes of Twister than in, say, all of Citize...
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I say this as a Democrat, for whom the Republican domination of government threatens many values tha...
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Ulysses, obviously. It was an elaborate prank, and our supposed intellectual elite continue to fall ...
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In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in th...
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The education that prepared me was my general education classes, which I tried to avoid when I was a...
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There's a reason why every human society has fiction. It teaches us how to be 'good', to...
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…I had seen the princess and let her lie there unawakened, because the happily ever after was so d...
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We're like the wicked witch. We promise gingerbread, then eat the little brats alive.
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We're all trying to decide whether your scores up there are a miracle or a mistake."

"A h...
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You're a monster.
Thanks. Does this mean I get a raise?
No, just a medal. The budget isn't...
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There are times when the world is rearranging itself, and at times like that, the right words can ch...
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Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along―the s...
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I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not lo...
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In order to learn, one must change one's mind
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Everyone is naked. Everyone wants to hide. But life is sweet. Let it go on.
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Most people I know are trying very hard to be good people ... that's how we define virtue,
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Whatever your gravity is when you get to the door, remember―the enemy's gate is down.
...
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There was no doubt now in Ender's mind. There was no help for him. Whatever he faced, now and foreve...
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I will never hurt you.
I will always help you.
If you are hungry
Ill give you my food...
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From you I can learn things that nobody knows.
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O my son Absalom,' Bean said softly, knowing for the first time the kind of anguish that could tear ...
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Nero, you are an example to all the children on this shuttle. Because most of them are so foolish, t...
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I’m not one to despise other people for their sins. I haven’t found one yet, that I didn’t say...
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You get all the pleasures of the puppeteer.
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Come into our home, daughters of Earth; dwell in our tunnels, harvest our fields; what we cannot do,...
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Ender understood more than she said. Manipulation of gravity was one thing; deception by the officer...
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I don't care how much you eat, Ender, self-cannibalism won't get you out of this school.
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How much time? Not as much as I had yesterday.
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In the end it was only Peter who had something he could say from the heart.

"Am I the on...
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You don't have to eat the entire turd to know that it's not a crab cake.
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Because these fools always look up for power. People above you, they never want to share power with ...
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He walked down the corridor, lined with his soldiers, who looked at him with love, with awe, with tr...
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Everyone is naked. Everyone wants to hide. But life is sweet. Let it go on.
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The enemy's gate is down.
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Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man stupid and blind in the eyes
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We've decided that your birthday present will be a car", said Marion.
Danny was touched. "But t...
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In my view, suicide is not really a wish for life to end.'
What is it then?'
It is the onl...
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Being here alone with nothing to do, I've been thinking about myself too. Trying to understand why I...
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Personal humiliation was painful. Humiliation of one's family was much worse. Humiliation of one's s...
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because if you can’t kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one wil...
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If only we could have talked to you, the hive-queen said in Ender's words. But since it could not be...
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I'm not a liar, sir,' she said.
"'No, I'm sure you sincerely become whatever it is you're prete...
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If words can be lethal weapons, I must provide them with an arsenal.
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When you have wisdom that another person knows that he needs, you give it freely. But when the other...
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Keep this in mind - it only works because what's between you, that's real, that's what matters. Bill...
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As long as you keep getting born, it's alright to die some times.
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The priests say that God created our souls, and that just puts us under the control of another puppe...
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If pigs could vote, the man with the slop bucket would be elected swineherd every time, no matter ho...
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The only people who think children are carefree are the ones who've forgotten their own childhood.
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From now on, you forget about gravity before you go through that door. The old gravity is gone, eras...
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There's a reason why every human society has fiction. It teaches us how to be 'good,' to beha...
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Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.
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With false names, on the right nets, they could be anybody. Old men, middle-aged women, anybody, as ...
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Sickness and healing are in every heart; death and deliverance in every hand.
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Perhaps a physicist would know at once why this whole idea was absurd. But then, perhaps a physicist...
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Human beings are free except when humanity needs them. Maybe humanity needs you. To do something. Ma...
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Peter, you're twelve years old. I'm ten. They have a word for people our age. They call us children ...
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Sometimes lies were more dependable than the truth.
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Remember, the enemy's gate is down.
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I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not "true" because we're hungry...
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I've watched through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and I tell you he's the one.
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He could see Bonzo's anger growing hot. Hot anger was bad. Ender's anger was cold, and he could use ...
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Changing the world is good for those who want their names in books. But being happy, that is for tho...
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Well, I'm your man. I'm the bloody bastard you wanted when you had me spawned. I'm your tool, and wh...
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There's a reason why every human society has fiction. It teaches us how to be 'good,' to behave in a...
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She worked her toes into the sand, feeling the tiny delicious pain of the friction of tiny chips of ...
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Let's fly away and live forever
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Besides," said Suriyawong. "This was not a rescue operation."
"What was it, target practice? Ch...
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In a way she actually preferred Peter to other people because of this. He always acted out of intell...
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Individual human beings are all tools, that the others use to help us all survive.” “That’s a ...
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All is going well, very well, I couldn’t ask for anything better—
So why do I hate my life?
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You don't know how to love people. You only know how to own them. And because people will never act ...
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The only teacher that's worth anything to you is your enemy.
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With life. Rooter says that life is how God gives purpose to the universe.
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Ningún ser humano es indigno cuando se comprenden sus motivos. Ninguna vida deja de merecer la pena...
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Thrower started toward them at a trot, then remembered his dignity and walked the rest of the way. T...
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I came because I've spent my whole life in the company of the brother that I hated. Now I want a cha...
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This is how humans are: We question all our beliefs, except for the ones that we really believe in, ...
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The computer is also not famous for having mercy.
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Graff had isolated Ender to make him struggle. To make him prove, not that he was competent, but tha...
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There's only one thing that will make them stop hating you. And that's being so good at what you do ...
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No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one's life is nothing. Even the mo...
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Bean sighed inwardly. It never failed. Whenever he had any conversation with Ender, it turned into a...
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What I want," he said softly, "is to stand in this meadow and walk in the light of the sun.
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The Buggers have finally, finally learned that we humans value each and every individual human life....
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Bean could see the hunger in their eyes. Not the regular hunger, for food, but the real hunger, the ...
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Poke gave him life. Ender gave it meaning.
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The criminal misuse of time was pointing out the mistakes. Catching them―noticing them―that was ...
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She remembered the story from her childhood, about Adam and Eve in the garden, and the talking snake...
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Humans mate with beings who challenge their supremacy. They have conflict between mates, not because...
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The lives of all people flow through time, and, regardless of how brutal one moment may be, how fill...
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When you hear a true story, there is a part of you that responds to it regardless of art, regardless...
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Nights were so real that days began to seem dreamlike to him.
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We don't read novels to have an experience like life. Heck, we're living lives, complete with all th...
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It was possible, wasn't it, that he loved her, and that in this time of terrifying opportunity he wa...
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Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along--the sa...
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He knew he could always be smart later, if that turned out to be a better strategy. But once you adm...
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The other four houses yielded jewelry, wallets, credit cards, laptops, iPads and Kindles, even a cou...
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Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf.
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Ender Wiggin isn't a killer. He just wins—thoroughly.
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I fell into playwriting accidentally, took some classes in it, and also took creative writing classe...
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Unemployment is capitalism's way of getting you to plant a garden.
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Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it i...
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I listen to music constantly while writing.
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But in the meantime I became accustomed to the writing life and it would be hard to change now - par...
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God, our genes, our environment, or some stupid programmer keying in code at an ancient terminal - t...
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Working is hard and distracts from having fun.
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I don't believe that there are aliens. I believe there are really different people.
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Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.
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Personal affection is a luxury you can have only after all your enemies are eliminated. Until then, ...
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Human beings may be miserable specimens, in the main, but we can learn, and, through learning, becom...
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Fiction, because it is not about somebody who actually lived in the real world, always has the possi...
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I also remembered that you were beautiful."
"Memory does play tricks on us."
"No. Your fac...
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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...
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The story is one that you and I will construct together in your memory. If the story means anything ...
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The story itself, the true story, is the one that the audience members create in their minds, guided...
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We have to go. I'm almost happy here.
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Ethan Wyeth: I hope you're thirsty."
Gideon Wyeth:"Why?"
Ethan: "Cause your dumb and ugly,...
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You know how writers are... they create themselves as they create their work. Or perhaps they create...
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Soldiers can sometimes make decisions that are smarter than the orders they've been given.
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Our great civilizations are nothing more than social machines to create the ideal female setting, wh...
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Happiness can depend as easily on useless things as on useful ones.
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Hive Queen: They never know anything. They don't have enough years in their little lives to come to ...
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It was not right, thought Han Fei-tzu, for his wife to die before him: her ancestor-of-the-heart had...
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Others find humanity by looking in their own hearts. Only lost souls need to search for it outside t...
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Quing-Jao: I am a slave to the gods, and I rejoice in it.
Jane: A slave who rejoices is a slave...
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It's the most charming thing about humans. You are all so sure that the lesser animals are bleeding ...
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I realized that everything important in sci-fi showed up in the magazines first. It's the proving gr...
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Eko brushed a tear from her eye, and Immo jeered at her, but father held up a hand. "Never mock a te...
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In order to learn, one must change one's mind
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Most people I know are trying very hard to be good people ... that's how we define virtue,
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It's the middle class that feels the luxury of being able to have causes.
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I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration.
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For he loved her, as you can only love someone who is an echo of yourself at your time of deepest so...
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The enemy's gate is down.
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"Dread is the first and strongest of the...kinds of fear. It is that tension, that waiting that come...
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Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man stupid and blind in the eyes
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[That wall] might be breached sometime in the future, but for now the only real conversation between...
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Anything can become a children's book if you give it to a child...Children are actually the best (an...
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Music isn't just a pleasure, a transient satisfaction. It's a need, a deep hunger; and when the musi...
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Parents always make their worst mistakes with their oldest children. That's when parents know the le...
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I want to be the kind of boy you are, thought Bean. But I don’t want to go through what you’ve b...
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I don't freeze up because it isn't my battle. I'm helping. I'm watching. But I'm free. Because it's ...
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He would always speak the language of the heart with an awkward foreign accent.
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The highest beings of all are the ones who are willing to pay any personal cost for the good of thos...
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Ender leaned his head against the wall of the corridor and cried until the bus came. I am just like ...
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When you walk on the face of a world, then forgiveness comes.
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Ender nodded. It was a lie, of course, that it wouldn’t hurt a bit. But since adults always said it when it was going to hurt, he could count on that statement as an accurate prediction of the future. Sometimes lies were more dependable than the truth.

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Orson Scott Card

Ender nodded. It was a lie, of course, that it wouldn’t hurt a bit. But since adults always said it when it was going to hurt, he could count on that statement as an accurate prediction of the future. Sometimes lies were more dependable than the truth.

Orson Scott Card

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