Short stories are designed to deliver their impact in as few pages as possible. A tremendous amount is left out, and a good short story writer learns to include only the most essential information.

Among my most prized possessions are words that I have never spoken.

In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him.

I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it

Ender Wiggin must believe that no matter what happens, no adult will ever, ever step in to help him in any way.

I need you to be clever, Bean. I need you to think of solutions to problems we haven't seen yet. I want you to try things that no one has ever tried because they're absolutely stupid.

Unemployment is capitalism's way of getting you to plant a garden.

We're like the wicked witch. We promise gingerbread, then eat the little brats alive.

Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.

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

There is more good writing and good acting in any ten minutes of Twister than in, say, all of Citizen Kane.

Of course, I am grateful for my strength. It makes me self-sufficient. When I bought a refrigerator, I carried it myself up the stairs to my apartment on the eighth floor.

There are things which are without answers, and there is nobody who can explain them. Either we feel them and sense them, or not. Sometimes we just give up and carry on.

What politics I ever learned, I learned in the streets, because it was part of the environment.

I am built close to the ground and of extravagant body.

If you want to score a goal, you have to hit the target.

I think I’ll play two years more, if my own body lets me do that... I still think my best tennis is still to come.

If you do something and people think you're stupid, just go for crazy. You get more respect that way because nobody likes stupid people.

I haven't been down to Navy Pier in such a long time. I know that's probably the touristy thing to do, but it just reminds me so much of 2000 when I was here shooting ["Hardball"].

Fascism and communism have not entirely disappeared but have been sidelined certainly, and liberal democracy has come to be accepted, in theory at least, around the world, if not always in practice.

Heaven give you many, many merry days.