"“People fear stone,” Usha said, “because it contains never-life.” “Non-life? You mean, death?” “Nonsense,” she repeated vehemently. “What’s to fear about death? Death is natural. Stone is never-life.” Spinel took another tack. “If they fear it, then how come enough Sharers want it so the traders stock shelves full?” “How should I know? Why do Valans drink the toxic waste product of sugar-eating yeast?”"

"A thousand fools believe a lie, and it’s good as truth."

"She tended to keep her eyes half closed, as if full sight of the world’s absurdity might be too much to bear."

"Leon Uris is a storyteller, in a direct line from those men who sat around fires in the days before history and made the tribe more human."

"Research to me is as important, or more important, than the writing. It is the foundation upon which the book is built."

"I was tough. I used everything to my advantage. I could be very ruthless."

"A soldier has one item that cannot be neglected. His feet. They are his wheels, his mechanised warfare."

"Characterization is an accident that flows out of action and dialogue."

"Judging the actions of the many by those of the one is both human and dangerous."

"'Probably. That doesn't make you into one.'"

"'Are they trained to treat everyone as a servant?'"

"'That's not good, that's triumph.'"

"'What if feeling good only comes after you destroy someone you hate?'"

"When in doubt, be ridiculous."

"'What's it really like to always be the prettiest person in a room? Dos it mean you're always acting as if in a play, because no one stops looking at you?'"

"Finally someone takes me seriously enough to ask for my word of honor, and it’s a villain."

"War is a convenient fix for government problems if it happens somewhere else. To other people."

"I am old, but the word to me means familiar, comfortable. Accustomed after long and venerable use. Not dilapidated and useless."

"It is a shame when we must regard a people as an enemy. It is a shame and a regret when the two peoples share so much. And it is a shame, a regret, and a tragedy when those peoples meet as individuals and find much to admire."

"He’d spent his entire exile schooling himself to face that he would never get what he wanted. People didn’t, sometimes. So you made a life as best you could."

"Angry men with pointy things sent to secure a foreign city are pretty much alike anywhere. That's what I've heard. So far nothing's convinced me different."

"Choose the duty that you can most effectively execute: that is, finally, all we can do in life."

"What might have happened to them to make them the way they were? It did not change what they now did, but it changed, profoundly, how he perceived their motivations, their place in the world."

"If your opponent is better armed and has longer reach, then surprise is your only ally. And then you'd better hope he's half asleep."

"If more people recognized the difference between friendship and mere attraction, and how love must partake of both to prosper, I expect there'd be more happy people."

"It would have been funny if I had been an observer and not a participant, an idea that gave me a disconcerting insight into gossip. As I talked beside the silent Tamara, I realized that despite how entertaining certain stories were, at the bottom of every item of gossip there was someone getting hurt."

"'It desolates me to disappoint you, but your brother is not here. Despite two really praiseworthy attempts at rescue.'"

"Who in the universe halts when the enemy tells them to?"

"Memory warps time, as it does the sights and sounds and smells of reality; for what shapes it is emotion, which can twist what seems clear, just as the surface of a pond seems to bend the stick thrust into the water."

"Nothing is "always," my dear. Except the greater truths, one of which is that power begets politics, and politics are more dangerous than war because there are fewer rules."

"I've been working hard at assuming Court polish, but the more I learn about what really goes on behind the pretty voices and waving fans and graceful bows, the more I comprehend that what is really said matters little, so long as the manner in which it is said pleases. I understand it, but I don't like it. Were I truly influential, then I would halt this foolishness that decrees that in Court one cannot be sick; that to admit you are sick is really to admit to political or social or romantic defeat; that to admit to any emotions usually means one really feels the opposite. It is a terrible kind of falsehood that people can only claim feelings as a kind of social weapon."

"I realized that despite how entertaining certain stories were, at the bottom of every item of gossip there was someone getting hurt."

"1. If I should remain in a persistent vegetative state for more than fifteen years, I would like someone to turn off the TV."

"And so I continue in borderline poverty, save for my one indulgence, no, my single absolute necessity: I take cabs. Yes, on occasion, when I wish to see what people with unpleasant skin conditions are wearing, I do take the subway. I have never, I am proud to say, taken the bus, because people who take the bus have given up."

"There was a cable-TV program that documented how Peeps are made, and it showed unlimited hordes of Peeps bouncing merrily down a conveyor belt, right toward the camera. I came."

"I believe in a benevolent God not because He created the Grand Canyon or Michelangelo, but because He gave us snacks."

"Wednesday (as Pocahontas): You have taken the land which is rightfully ours. Years from now, my people will be forced to live in mobile homes on reservations; your people will wear cardigans and drink highballs. We will sell our bracelets by the roadside; you will play golf and enjoy hot hors d'oeuvres. My people will have pain and degradation; your people will have stick-shifts. The gods of my tribe have spoken. They have said, "Do not trust the Pilgrims, especially Sarah Miller." Becky (as Sarah Miller): Gary, she's changing the words! Wednesday (as Pocahontas): And for all these reasons, I have decided to scalp you and burn your village to the ground."

"Whenever I stumble over my own feet, or blurt out a thought that makes no sense at all, or leave the house wearing one pattern too many, I always think, It's okay, I'm from New Jersey. I love New Jersey, because it's not just an all-purpose punch line, but probably a handy legal defense, as in, “Yes, I shot my wife because I thought she was Bigfoot, but I'm from New Jersey.”"

"I am afraid. Not of life, or death, or nothingness, but of wasting it as if I had never been."

"You don't know what it's like to have something happening inside you, that you can't see and can't control, and know it's all slipping through your fingers."

"As when men to keep from being swept overboard in the storm clutch at each other's hands to resist being torn apart, so our bodies fused a link in the human chain that kept us from being swept into nothing."

"Don't misunderstand me," I said. "Intelligence is one of the greatest human gifts. But all too often a search for knowledge drives out the search for love. This is something else I've discovered for myself very recently. I present it to you as a hypothesis: Intelligence without the ability to give and receive affection leads to mental and moral breakdown, to neurosis, and possibly even psychosis. And I say that the mind absorbed in and involved in itself as a self-centered end, to the exclusion of human relationships, can only lead to violence and pain."

"Intelligence alone doesn't mean a damned thing. Here in your university, intelligence, education, knowledge, have all become great idols. But I know now there's one thing you've all overlooked: intelligence and education that hasn't been tempered by human affection isn't worth a damn."

"We learn what something is not — and that is as important as a positive discovery to the man who is going to pick up from there. At least he knows what not to do."

"No one really starts anything new, Mrs Nemur. Everyone builds on other men's failures. There is nothing really original in science. What each man contributes to the sum of knowledge is what counts."

"How many great problems have gone unsolved because men didn't know enough, or have enough faith in the creative process and in themselves, to let go for the whole mind to work at it?"

"There are a lot of people who will give money or materials, but very few who will give time and affection."

"So many of the ideas on which our psychologists base their beliefs about human intelligence, memory, and learning are all wishful thinking."

"I am not only a thing, but also a way of being — one of many ways — and knowing the paths I have followed and the ones left to take will help me understand what I am becoming."