And enough for me that when my hand touched your shoulder, you leaned on me; and when you felt me slip away, you called my name.
Orson Scott CardRead
The only way to retrieve a secret,once known, is to replace it with a lie.
Interpretation
Secrets once revealed can only be concealed again through deception.
This quote suggests that once a truth has been uncovered, the only means to hide it is to obscure it with falsehoods. It raises questions about the nature of truth and deception, implying that honesty can lead to vulnerability, while lies can act as a shield to protect one's secrets.
In practice
In a discussion about honesty in relationships, one might say, 'As Orson Scott Card said, 'The only way to retrieve a secret, once known, is to replace it with a lie.'
And enough for me that when my hand touched your shoulder, you leaned on me; and when you felt me slip away, you called my name.
The world is always a democracy in times of flux, and the man with the best voice will win.
Never mind that the story had turned out to be lies and foolishness—there was always folks stupid enough to say, Where there's smoke there's fire, when the saying should have been, Where there's scandalous lies there's always malicious believers and spreaders-around, regardless of evidence.
The lives of all people flow through time, and, regardless of how brutal one moment may be, how filled with grief or pain or fear, time flows through all lives equally.
You take a step, then another. That's the journey. But to take a step with your eyes open is not a journey at all, it's a remaking of your own mind.
I've had your tears with mine, and you've had mine with yours. I think that's more intimate even than a kiss.
The way I work, the interview never becomes larger than the person being interviewed.
Much of what we call evil is due entirely to the way men take the phenomenon. It can so often be converted into a bracing and tonic good by a simple change of the sufferer's inner attitude from one of fear to one of fight; its string can so often depart and turn into a relish when, after vainly seeking to shun it, we agree to face about and bear it.
Events of October 1962 indicated, as they had all through history, that control of the sea means security. Control of the seas can mean peace. Control of the seas can mean victory. The United States must control the seas if it is to protect your security.
Childhood knows unhappiness through men. In solitude, it can relax its aches. When the human world leaves him in peace, the child feels like the son of the cosmos.
It [a new world order] needs only that the governments of Britain, the United States, France, Germany, and Russia should get together in order to set up an effective control of currency, credit, production, and distribution – that is to say, an effective ‘dictatorship of prosperity,’ for the whole world. The other sixty odd States would have to join in or accommodate themselves to the over-ruling decisions of these major Powers.
Success on a cosmic level completely eludes me. I'm deeply suspicious of things being too good. It's part of my superstition, I think, to generate pain in order to give the illusion of gain. I'm not saying I reject success, but honestly, I don't quite know how to deal with it. It's an old feeling: As soon as you have the thing you've been going after all your life, that reasonable degree of security, you start kicking against it, doubting it.
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