The battlefield is first and foremost horrible stenches, not sights, not sounds, but stenches. They don't travel well into literature.

Every single pleasure I can imagine or have experienced is more delightful, more of a pleasure, if you take it in small sips, if you take your time. Reading is not an exception.

Fundamentalist s live life with an exclamation point. I prefer to live my life with a question mark.

Writing a poem is like having an affair, a one-night stand; a short story is a romance, a relationship; a novel is a marriage-one has to be cunning, devise compromises, and make sacrifices.

Words create conceptions and self-conceptions and ultimately nations. They can start and stop wars. They can would and heal. Choosing words carefully is a moral responsibility.

A conflict begins and ends in the hearts and minds of people, not in the hilltops.

All of my novels are democracies.

The only way to keep a dream, any dream at all, to keep a dream perfect and rosy and intact and unsullied is never to live it out.

The opposite of compromise is not integrity. The opposite of compromise is not idealism. The opposite of compromise is fanaticism and death.

I wrote The Same Sea not as a political allegory about Israelis and Palestinians. I wrote it about something much more gutsy and immediate. I wrote it as a piece of chamber music.

Now, Israel is a fulfillment, and as a fulfillment, it is flawed. The fact that it is flawed is not so much a testimony about the failures of Israel. No, it is a testimony about the nature of dreams.

You don’t see what I see.

To greet each day ossified

Because all I could think about was you, Anna, and how good you are, and what you'd think of me. You put thoughts into my head a Neph shouldn't have!

Jesus - “the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Colossians 2:9).

What thou art that thou art.

After a while, you start to realize that you should write a book you would want to read. I try to write a book I would enjoy.

He knew he had no right to touch her, crave her like air, but he did both. And when he put his mouth on hers, he recognized the taste of her, like she'd been made just for him.

Everything I am, everything I'll ever be, I owe to my family, to God's grace and to the people of Indiana.

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

Men have an easier time buying bathing suits. Women have two types: depressing and more depressing. Men have two types: nerdy and not nerdy.