- I had seen the princess and let her lie there unawakened, because the happily ever after was so damnably much work.
- The great forces of history were real, after a fashion. But when you examined them closely, those great forces always came down to the dreams and hungers and judgments of individuals.
- They are beautiful monsters... And when they live in a network of peace and hope, when they trust the world and their deepest hungers are fulfilled, then within that system, that delicate web, there is joy. That is what we live for, to bind the monsters together, to murder their fear and give birth to their beauty.
- I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration.
- Only a fool can't be fooled.
- There's always hope... even when there isn't faith. And sometimes, without hope or faith, there must be charity.
- To me, the truth is what actually happened. Yet it is impossible to know anything approaching the whole truth about past events. Even the people living them could not possibly understand. That truth is always out of reach.
- Even the devil gives some justice to his victims, when they're beyond all help.
- There's a sort of rage a man feels when he's been deceived where he most trusted. It compares to no other anger.
- Many a man isn't as good as his woman, but I never knew a husband who was better than his wife.
- I'm passing through the world invisibly. Even when people see or speak to me it's as if I didn't exist, as if I had no right to exist. I tread across their lands and they don't see me. I act and act and act and nothing makes any difference in the world. But they touch me.
- There's some people who do things so bad it tears the fabric of the world, and then there's some people so sweet and good that they can feel it when the world gets torn. They see things, they know things, only they're so good and pure that they don't understand what it is that they're seeing.
- If there's no place in the universe for a man to resist the thieves of freedom and still be called a good man, then I don't think there is any good or evil in the universe.
- If you could stop the suffering and dying, and didn't stop it, then you are guilty.
- You were born with compassion, only that also means that when people are cruel to you it cuts you deep. You won't understand that you have to walk right up to the ones who are being hateful and laugh in their faces and earn their respect. Instead you'll try to figure out what you did to make them mad at you.
- I think if you left grownups to do what they really actually wanted most in the world to do, every single one of them would lie down and take a nap for the rest of their life. I know this because that's what every grownup does as soon as they're alone.
- Happiness is not a life without pain, but rather a life in which the pain is traded for a worthy price.
- We are the actors and the audience as well, all of us. And the critics. We are also the critics.
- She will look at you as women look at men, and she will judge you as women judge men - not on the strength of their arguments, and not on their cleverness or prowess in battle, but rather on the force of their character, the intensity of their passion, the strength of their soul, their compassion, and - ah, this above all - their conversation.
- First we try to preserve ourselves, until we see that we can't. Then we try to preserve our children, until we see we can't. Then we act to preserve our kin, and then our village or tribe, and when we see we can't preserve even them, then we act in order to preserve our memory. And if we can't do that, what is left?
- Good people can't out-think evil, 'cause evil think of things good folks can't think of. Can't enter your head what evil do.
- I've known some bad people and some good people in my life, and it's the bad ones who live in fear, all the time. Cause they know their own hearts... And they think everyone else is just waiting to pull the same moves on them that they've got planned to pull on somebody else.
- No man can bear to live with a woman who speaks nothing but the truth to him.
- Marriage is about banality. Its purpose is banality, to create an environment of surpassing safety and predictability for young children to grow up in the foundation of life, the root of inner peace.
- Honesty always sounds like impudence to the vain and stupid.
- I've seen Australia and I've lived on an asteroid and I'd take the asteroid.
- Why won't anyone ever answer my questions? Because you never stop asking them and especially because you keep asking them even when it's clear that nobody knows the answers. Well, how do I know that they don't know the answer unless I ask?
- When a man acts like a child, he's boyish, and everyone's delighted. When a boy acts the same way, he's childish, and everyone tells him to be a man.
- Wouldn't it have been better to change humanity so it no longer desired to destroy itself?
- To say what's in their hearts, regardless of shame. It doesn't change what they feel, what they want. It just helps... loosen them up.
- Today, I saw a spark of decency. Let's blow on that spark and give it fuel.
- If a father commands a son to commit a crime so terrible that the son can't do it and live with himself, then is it betrayal for the son to disobey his father?
- I have no secret thoughts... Or rather, they're not secret because I've withheld them - if they're unknown, it's because no one asked.
- Keep me alive. Keep me alive long enough for me to conquer the animal within myself. Long enough for me to learn to partner myself with a woman who is better and stronger than me. Long enough for me to reconcile myself with my brothers. Long enough to be as good a man as my father, and as good as my mother, too.
- Show him who I am, so he will pity me instead of fearing me. And then we can turn pity into compassion, and compassion into understanding, and understanding into affection, and affection into love, and love into life, the life of our children, the life of the new self we will become together.
- Which is the greater wrong? To hurt the unforgiving one, or hurt the one who has forgiven all?
- Law can change how people behave when others are watching - that's all.
- It occurred to me that if my friends were loathsome, perhaps I needed to learn from my enemies.
- Don't you hate it when somebody knows you better than you know yourself?
- Not a woman I ever met wasn't crazy with religion. Religion makes them crazy.
- I always tell what I believe. Whether it's true, I'm no more sure than any man.
- The most evil creatures don't desire the destruction of everything-they only desire to exploit it for themselves.
- I've never seen a soft heart turn hard. At least not without good reason.
- I'm a father who loves his children, a husband who loves his wife, a farmer who pays his debts, and a miller without a millstone
- Everything possible to be believed is an image of the truth.
- There's no fear of future in the song of life, just the ever-joyful present moment. Which is good enough.
- You can be sorry, and you can be forgiven, but you can't call back the futures that your bad decisions lost.
- We don't admit it to ourselves, not until the very moment of death, but in that moment, we see all life before us and we understand how we chose, every day of our lives, the manner of our death.
- Wasn't that their natural right, to know the truth so as to be able to let the truth lead them to do good or evil, as they chose?
- We've seen the worst that men can do, pa, and been the worst that men can be. But that don't mean that someday we won't see the best, too. And if we can never be perfect after this, well, we can still be pretty good, can't we?
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