~Assorted sayings and the such...~

" 'I'll send you my memoir. I'll dedicate it to you...my beloved brother. I followed you gladly to two dozen worlds, but you wouldn't stay even two weeks when I asked you...Ender! I wouldn't have said these things if you weren't leaving [Trondheim] like a burglar who was caught in the act!...'
'No, you're right, I wanted to hurry because I have a work to do there [at Lusitania], and every day here is marking time, and because it hurts me every time I see you and Jakt growing closer and you and me growing more distant, even though I know that 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.'
Now emotion stopped him, and he wept; so did she. 'I don't hate you, I love you, you're a part of myself, you're my heart and when you go it's my heart torn out and carried away--'
And that was the end of speech.
~Speaker for the Dead, Orson Scott Card

"Teneniel said, 'I saw you...in a vision. I'd been lonely so long...I think perhaps you are my destiny.'
Luke took her clasped hands in his, held them. "I don't believe in destiny. I think we forge our own path in life through the choices we make....'
'...But you act as if love must come tentatively.'
'I'm not sure if it comes tentatively,' Luke said. 'It's just that sometimes it grows, but usually it dies a quick death.'
'So?' Teneniel said. 'If our love dies a quick death, what have we lost?'
'I can't do that,' Luke said. 'Love is more than a mere curiosity or a momentary excitment. I don't think two people can know it's real until they've spent time together, until they have a history together. But I have a duty to fulfill...after I leave this planet, the truth is that I'll probably never see you again. You and I won't ever have much of a history.'
Luke wanted to say more, wanted to tell her that someday he hoped to meet a girl like her..."
--The Courtship of Princess Leia, Dave Wolverton

"She wondered whether there would ever come an hour in her life when she didn't think of him--didn't speak to him in her head, didn't relive every moment they'd been together...She had never dreamed of what it would feel like to love someone so much; of all the things that had astonished her in her adventures, that was what astonished her the most. She thought the tenderness it left in her heart was like a bruise that would never go away, but she would cherish it forever."
--The Amber Spyglass, by Philip Pullman

More Philip Pullman ("His Dark Materials" trilogy)

"I used to be a nun, you see. I thought physics could be done to the glory of God, till I saw there wasn't any god at all and that physics was more interesting anyway."
--The Amber Spyglass, Philip Pullman (Mary Malone speaking)

" 'When you stopped believing in God...did you stop believing in good and evil?' he [Will] went on.
'No. But I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside of us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone, or that's an evil one, because it hurt them. People are too complicated to have simple labels.'"
~The Amber Spyglass (Will and Mary Malone)

Orson Scott Card

"A broken clock is right two times a day."
~Ender's Shadow

"'Use you. That's the operative word here, Bean.'
'Well, aren't you being used in your cause?'
'By God, not by Peter Wiggin.'
'I'll bet Peter Wiggin sends a lot clearer messages than God does.'"
~Shadow of the Hegemon

"You can be sorry, and you can be forgiven, but you can't call back the futures that your bad decisions lost."
~Prentice Alvin

"When two parties are lying to each other and both know the other's lying, it comes mighty close to telling the truth."
~Red Prophet

"There is no good thing that does not cost a dear price. That is what Cristoforo learned...Happiness is not a life without pain, but rather a life in which the pain is traded for a worthy price."
~Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus

"'No...none of it is wasted. The child you hold in your arms for only a day before he dies...that one day is enough of a purpose in itself. Entropy has been thrown back for an hour, a day, a week, a month. Just because we might all die here on this little world does not undo the lives before the deaths.'"
~Olhado to Grego, Speaker for the Dead

"Do the gods of different nations talk to each other?...
Is there some annual get-together where they compare each others worshippers?
Mine will bow their faces to the floor and trace woodgrain lines for me, says one.
Mine will sacrifice animals, says another.
Mine will kill anyone who insults me, says a third.

Here is the question I think about most often:
Are there any who can honestly boast,
My worshippers obey my good laws,
and treat each other kindly,
and live simple generous lives?"
~The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao, Children of the Mind

Other Quotations
(that Emi will sort later)

"Life is instants...you will know you are living your questions when you see life that way. As precious, fleeting instants, unconnected to anything else, with no promise of another instant to come."
~A quote Lian gave me...don't know where she got it...

"'But words endure too...and what about the kind act?...The small gesture of charity? Isn't that sort of beauty more beautiful than any other?'
'And equally evanescent...for small charities cannot this wicked world amend. But perhaps charity is the kind of beauty we comprehend the best because we miss it the most.' "
~Gregory Maguire, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister

"Traveling carries with it the curse of being at home everywhere and yet nowhere, for wherever one is some part of oneself remains on another continent."
~Margot Fonteyn (English Ballerina)

"Why do we laugh? We laugh because it hurts."
~Stranger in a Strange Land

Calvin and Hobbes

"Look at all this homework I'm supposed to do! I don't want to do this garbage! I want to go play outside! Childhood is short and maturity is forever."
~Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes

"People are such jerks. If you can just get most people to ignore you and leave you alone, you're doing good. If you can find even one person you like, you're lucky...and if that person can also stand you, you're really lucky."
~Calvin

"Today for Show and Tell I've brought a tiny marvel of nature: A single snowflake. I think we might all learn a lesson from how this utterly unique and exquisite crystal turns into an ordinary, boring molecule of water just like every other one,when you bring it into the classroom. And now, while the analogy sinks in, I'll be leaving you drips and going outside."
~Calvin

"'Hobbes, do you believe in Satan? The ultimate embodiment of all evil and corruption?'
'I don't think man needs the help.'"
~Calvin and Hobbes

Le Petit Prince (Antoine de St Exupery)
These are really much better in the original French, but I wrote some translations, trying to capture the spirit if not the literal meanings of the quotations...

"Je n'aime pas qu'on lise mon livre a la legere...Il y a six ans deja que mon ami s'en est alle avec son mouton. Si j'essaie ici de le decrire, c'est afin de ne pas l'oublier. C'est triste d'oublier un ami." ("I do not want you to read my tale lightly. It has already been six years since my friend left with his sheep. If I try to describe him here, it is so that I will not forget him; it is sad to forget a friend.")