Quotes from William M. Kucmierowski

She had called in the debt that parents owe a child for bringing her, unasked, into a strange world. One should never make an offer without knowing full well what will happen if it is accepted.

A neurosis defends itself by coming up with rationalizations to explain away bizarre behavior.

The worst mistake of first contact, made throughout history by individuals on both sides of every new encounter, has been the unfortunate habit of making assumptions. It often proved fatal.

Life is not fair...Anyone who says it is, or even that it ought to be, is a fool or worse.

Costner's film captured the main character's motives, while removing 30 IQ points.

The Union will awaken. It always has. We always will.

Every marvel of our age arose out of the critical give and take of an open society. No other civilization ever managed to incorporate this crucial innovation, weaving it into daily life. And if you disagree with this ... say so!

Change is the principal feature of our age and literature should explore how people deal with it. The best science fiction does that, head-on.

I like to be surprised. Fresh implications and plot twists erupt as a story unfolds. Characters develop backgrounds, adding depth and feeling. Writing feels like exploring.

Alas, criticism has always been what human beings, especially leaders, most hate to hear.

In all of history, we have found just one cure for errora partial antidote against making and repeating grand, foolish mistakes, a remedy against self-deception. That antidote is criticism.

It's how creativity works. Especially in humans. For every good idea, ten thousand idiotic ones must first be posed, sifted, tried out, and discarded. A mind that's afraid to toy with the ridiculous will never come up with the brilliantly original.

Had I been wrong, this would still have been the honorable thing to do. I am very glad, however, to find out that I was right.

This is a lovely world, he sighed. And yet it has suffered horror. Sometimes, so-called civilization seems bent on destroying those very things which it is sworn to protect.

After all, he muttered, what can they do to shake the confidence of a fellow whos got delusions of adequacy?

He was, after all, a diplomat, and understood that the best and firmest deals are based on open self-interest.

A sane being wished for peace and serenity, not to be the mortar in which the ingredients of destiny are finely ground.

It was silly to suppose that trials only hardened men, automatically making them wise. He knew many who were stupid, arrogant, and mean, in spite of having suffered.

The same was true of the most popular girls. They had no empathy, no compassion for more normal kids.

Petals floating by, Drift through my womans hand, As she remembers me.

He read about humanitys age-old racial struggles. Had it really been less than half a millennium since humans contrived gigantic, fatuous lies about each other simply because of pigment shades, and killed millions because they believed their own lies?

It was better to imagine a sacrifice being for something.

He wasnt afraid of dying, only of having not done all he could, and not properly spitting in the eye of death when it came for him. That final gesture was important.

Words penetrated the tank from the outer room. They were tantalizing, like those ghosts of meaning in a great symphonyhinting that the composer had caught a glimpse of something notes could only vaguely convey and words could never even approach.