Quotes

"I'm at your back door
with the earth of a hundred nations in my skin
you won't recognize me
for the light in my eyes is strange
it was years ago, god knows
when you strained to tell me your whole truth
that you were not mine to save
that you could not change."
-Enough To Go By (Waking Hour), by Vienna Teng

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions,
perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Let him step to the music he hears,
however measured or far away."
-Henry David Thoreau

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster."
-Friedrich Nietzsche

"Leave me be - I don't want to argue
I just get confused and I come all undone."
-Sarah McLachlan

"We like someone because.
We love someone although."
- Henri de Montherlant

"The ghost walks, pauses, wonders "What the hell?", and walks on."
-Jeff Aldrich

"Only people that are afraid of the water want to understand it.  Other people jump in and get wet."
-Sphere, by Michael Crichton

"No shortcuts"
-Charlotte Sometimes

"When you find yourself in a hole, quit digging."
-Confucious?

"It doesn't take a lot of strength to hang on.  It takes a lot of strength to let go."
-Republican J. C. Watts, Jr.

"There are all these ideals about what is perfect and what is beautiful and what is smart, but the most appealing thing is, that which is me is nobody else."
-Jennifer Lopez

"All that's well in my life is rooted in love.  All that's wrong in my life is rooted in fear.  There is no right or wrong.  There's no judgement.  There's no sense in judging."
- Father Mychal, Never Forget - An oral history of Sept. 11, 2001

"People get stuck sometimes... What it is, I think there's a jump that some people have to make, sometimes, and if they don't do it, then they're stuck good... "
- Turner, Count Zero by William Gibson

"To be an artist is first to be a manual laborer."
"To try to understand another human being, to grapple for his ultimate depths, that is the most dangerous of human endeavors."
"There is no thrill of mortal danger to surpass that of a lone man trying to create something that never existed before."
"One should not become an artist because he can, but because he must.  It is only for those who would be miserable without it."
"Pleasure is one of the most important things in life, as important as food or drink ..."
"What we know of others is our personal secret."
"Talent is cheap; dedication is expensive.  It will cost you your life."
"I'm never less alone than when alone."
- The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone

"I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there.  Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for this one."
- Henry David Thoreau, Walden.

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive.  And then go and do that.  Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."
- Harold Whitman

"You can't make a real commitment without realizing that it's a choice made over and over again."
- Keeping the Faith.

"When you look directly at an insane man all you see is a reflection of your own knowledge that he's insane, which is not to see him at all.  To see him you must see what he saw and when you are trying to see the vision of an insane man, an oblique route is the only way to come at it.  Otherwise your own opinions block the way...  The ghost [Phaedrus] pursued was the ghost that underlies all of technology, all of modern science, all of Western thought.  It was the ghost of rationality itself."
- Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

"Now it's become apparent that this [cultural change] isn't a fad that going to go away next year or the year after.  It's here to stay because it's a very serious and important way of looking at things that looks incompatible with reason and order and responsibility but actually is not...  It was an intrusion on his reality.  It just blew a hole right through his whole groovy way of looking at things and he would not face up to it because it seemed to threaten his whole lifestyle."
- Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

"The world has no existence whatsoever outside the human imagination.  It's all a ghost, and in antiquity was so recognized as a ghost, the whole blessed world we live in."
- Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

"And, of course, when you discover something like that and it's like discovering a tooth with a missing filling.  You have to probe it, work around it, push on it, think about it, not because it's enjoyable but because it's on your mind and it won't get off your mind...  Not to deliberately irritate him, but because the irritation seems symptomatic of something deeper, something under the surface that isn't immediately apparent."
- Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

"I never try to give my life meaning by demeaning you."
- Alana Davis / Ani DiFranco, 32 Flavors

"The wise know their limitations; the foolish do not."
- Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh

"What principles are you willing to stand by, even if it means detriment to yourself?"
-Farrokh Mistree

"When you discard arrogance, complexity, and a few other things that get in the way, sooner or later you will discover that simple, childlike, and mysterious secret known to those of the Uncarved Block: Life is Fun."
- Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh

 "Tell me and I will forget,
Show me and I will remember,
Let me do it and I will understand."
-Confucius

"Happy people are always successful,
Successful people are not always happy."
-SRL theme

"Kids can be so cruel."
 - I don’t remember…

"Perhaps this optimism will crash on down like a house of cards...I know that my decision to change my life was not that hard"
-frente!

"You don’t have to fail to learn how to succeed."
-Farrokh Mistree

"People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life....  I think what we’re really seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our innermost being and reality, so that we can actually feel the rapture of being alive."
-Joseph Campbell

"And I don’t really know him at all.  I don’t know anybody, and nobody knows me.  We spend our lives guessing at what’s going on inside everybody else and when we happen to get lucky and guess right, we think we "understand."  Such nonsense.  Even a monkey at a computer will type a word now and then."
 - Xenocide by Orson Scott Card

"The future is a hundred thousand threads, but the past is a fabric that can never be rewoven.  Maybe I could have been content.  Maybe not."
 - Wang-mu, Xenocide by Orson Scott Card

"Others find humanity by looking in their own hearts.  Only lost souls need to search for it outside themselves."
- Valentine, Xenocide by Orson Scott Card

"And what good is it?  To see something wondrous, and have no idea what it is you saw?"
 -A traveler, Earthfall by Orson Scott Card

"Wouldn’t it have been sad if I had spent my life bending and shaping life, and yet had never taken part in it myself?  I was spared of that and I am glad of it."
 Shedemei, Earthfall by Orson Scott Card

"Only a few people are truly awake, and they live their lives in a state of constant and total amazement."
 -Patricia Graynomore (Meg Ryan), Joe vs. the Volcano

"A leader is not always the one who gives orders."
- Drew Matter, 3110 Critical Evaluation

"Impatience makes fools of us all."
- John Haskins

"Look at the speed out there,
it magnetizes me to it.
And I have no fear,
I'm only into this to - enjoy."
- Bjork - Post

"Wishful thinking gives false gods to people who hunger for gods, but those who yearn for a world with no gods are no less likely to fall victim to their own wishful thinking."
 - Volemak, Earthfall by Orson Scott Card

"Children are a perpetual, self-renewing underclass, helpless to escape from the decisions of adults until they become adults themselves."
- Orson Scott Card, Intro to Ender’s Game

"There’s only one thing that will make them stop hating you.  And that’s being so good at what you do that they can’t ignore you."
- Graff, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

"Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man stupid and blind in the eyes."
- Mazer Rackham, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

"There were many who decided that their life was worthwhile enough, despite their errors, that when they died a Speaker should tell the truth for them."
- Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

"Might we therefore live with less regret if we dared to more often leave the safe harbor - to venture out, risking failure, but at least having tried?  The fruit is out on the limb."
- David G. Myers

"Life is a wonderful thing when you’re humming the words to a love song."
- Erasure, Fingers and Thumbs (Cold Summer’s Day)

"A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday."
- Jonathan Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects

"Do I contradict myself?  Very well then I contradict myself.  (I am large, I contain multitudes.)"
- Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

"Maybe the highest triumph for the Creator, is to see his creations re-create themselves."
- Kasparov, about Deep Blue II

"Look at me, I’m not you."
 - New Order Republic

"C’est la vie"
- Dr. Thomas Kurfess

"For the young men and women who stick to their training while their youth calls.  It’s hard, it will get harder, but it turns the world."
- Bart Kosko, Fuzzy Thinking

"Changing the world is good for those who want their names in books.  But being happy, that is for those who write their names in the lives of others, and hold the hearts of others as the treasure most dear."
 - Children of the Mind, by Orson Scott Card

"I've had your tears with mine, and you've had mine with yours.  I think that's more intimate even than a kiss."
 - Jane in Children of the Mind, by Orson Scott Card

"Don't be reckless with other people's hearts.  Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.
Don't waste your time on jealousy.  Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself."
 - Mary Schmich

"No gift is worth a damn, unless it’s the most precious thing you’ve got."
-Ellsworth Toohey, The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

"I can accept anything, except what seems to be the easiest for most people: the halfway, the almost, the in-between."
-Dominique, The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

"To say ‘I love you’ one must first know how to say the ‘I’."
-Howard Roark, The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

"When I listen to a symphony I love, I don’t get from it what the composer got."
-Howard Roark, The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

"To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world.  That’s what everybody does every hour of his life.  If I asked you to keep your soul - would you understand why that is much harder?"
-Howard Roark, The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

"And that’s the sin that can’t be forgiven - that I hadn’t done what I wanted.  It feels so dirty and pointless and monstrous, as one feels about insanity, because there’s no sense to to it, no dignity, nothing but pain."
-Peter Keating, The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand