I'm not stupid!" In Bean's experience, that was a sentence never uttered except to prove its own inaccuracy.

But when it comes to human beings, the only type of cause that matters is final cause, the purpose. What a person had in mind. Once you understand what people really want, you can't hate them anymore. You can fear them, but you can't hate them, because you can always find the same desires in your own heart.

We thought we were the only thinking beings in the universe, until we met you, but never did we dream that thought could arise from the lonely animals who cannot dream each other's dreams

Grief,she reminded herself, is almost always for the mourner's loss.

Mom," said Peter, "nobody thinks you're a lackwit, if that's what you're worried about." Lackwit? In what musty drawer of some dead English professor's dust-covered desk did you find that word? I assure you that never in my worst nightmares did I ever suppose that I was a lackwit.

Evil people naturally assume that you will use that power exactly as they would use it.

But the truth is that no person ever understands another, from beginning to end of life, there is no truth that can be known, only the story we imagine to be true, the story they really believe to be true about themselves; and all of them lies.