It’s never overreacting to ask for what you want and need.

[T]he relentless note of incipient hysteria, the invitation to panic, the ungrounded scenarios--the overwhelming and underlying desire for something truly terrible to happen so that you could have something really hot to talk about--was still startling. We call disasters unimaginable, but all we do is imagine such things. That, you could conclude mordantly, is the real soundtrack of our time: the amplification of the self-evident toward the creation of paralyzing, preëmptive paranoia.

The Tausennigan Ob'enn warlords look like cuddly teddy-bears?""Yes, they do, and they'd cheerfully exterminate your entire race for making that observation!""I guess that explains their rich military history, then.

Diplomacy's primary law: LEAVE ROOM FOR NEGOTIATION.

When justice is more certain and more mild, is at the same time more efficacious.

Peace is not only the absence of war, but also a way of seeing the world, and the choices we make are how we express and manifest that vision of the world.

She knew that nothing was ever as overwhelming or final as he seemed to think - that if he would wait, instead of shouting, there'd be less to shout over in the end.

July 15, 1991Nita: My mother was a paragon of our neighborhood, People always come up to us with hugs, saying "You have the most wonderful mother." l'd think. “Don't you see what's going on in this house?” To this day, if somehow even in jest raises their hand to me, I will do this (raises hands to protect face and cowers) I cringe. Then they look at me like, what's your probem? You don't get that from a great childhood.

Society's revenge matched its fright.