A Quote by Trenton Lee Stewart

I think when I started to write The Mysterious Benedict Society that I had that kind of thing in mind - the notion of having to be able to solve puzzles and riddles because enormous stakes rode upon your ability to do that.
I started to write because of my dream to become a filmmaker. I got to know about a film school in Paris and it was my goal to get there. To do that I knew I had to learn French. In order to practice I started to write journals in French. The effort I made to master what I regarded a bad thing - a language owned by the rich Moroccans - brought me the ability to write.
Puzzles are great because they're fun. But really we are drawn to puzzles because they can be solved. We love the idea of being able to put a puzzle together and it being complete: you do it perfectly, step away, and you've completed the job. There's a deep satisfaction from that, and I think we wish for the ability to do that with everything. But emotions just don't work that way, people don't work that way, relationships don't work that way.
Agatha Christie never wrote books that just started with a dead body, and a 'Let's find out who the murderer is', which is kind of mysterious but not that mysterious. She always started with, 'How can this thing be happening; isn't it strange?'
The way sadness works is one of the strange riddles of the world. If you are stricken with a great sadness, you may feel as if you have been set aflame, not only because of the enormous pain, but also because your sadness may spread over your life, like smoke from an enormous fire.
I rode, and I rode, and I rode. I rode like I had never ridden, punishing my body up and down every hill I could find. I rode when no one else would ride.
The expression I use: Pain + Reality = Progress. Whenever I would have a painful mistake, I started to view that as puzzles that would give me gems if I could solve the puzzle. So, it made me thoughtful - what should I do differently next time? That was the puzzle. And the gem was some principle for handling the same thing when it came along again, and then I would write it down. And by writing it down and referring to it, and also being able to show it to other people so that we could agree that that was a good way of handling that thing - that was very, very powerful.
To salvage a society, it is necessary to aid, abet, raise and increase that state of mind. If you were to set up a perfect government out here which required the intervention of nobody, you would have destroyed the society. But by raising the individual ability of the persons in the society within the framework that they are able to view, raise their ability within the framework they are able to view, you would have achieved a marked advance for that society.
Remember, children. For every exit, there is also an entrance. ~ Milligan, The Mysterious Benedict Society
I feel that, you know, the enormous luck I've had in being able to make a living, and to never have had to have written one word that I didn't want to write, to be able to have satisfied that dictum I set for myself, which was not to work for pay, but to be paid for my work - just to be able to satisfy those standards that I set for myself has been an enormous privilege.
Milligan! Come and tell us why you're so dreadfully glum!" ~ Constance, The Mysterious Benedict Society
My background is in math and science, and I thrive on complexity, and I think lots of people do. People love puzzles; it's human nature to want to solve puzzles.
No; but you came, and found the riddles waiting for you! Indeed you are yourself the only riddle. What you call riddles are truths, and seem riddles because you are not true.
Computer science is the most misunderstood field there is. You are being paid to solve puzzles. For a person who has practiced meditation in past lives, that is the way your mind works.
We think it will be shortly afterwards, but it seems a terrible thing to gamble with such big stakes in diplomacy without having your master card in your hand.
As a kid, I loved doing puzzles, solving riddles, and reading mystery books. I also loved animals and always had pets.
People often think of America as a classless society, but, of course, that isn't true. Within immigrant communities, there's an enormous distinction of class, depending on who your parents are, and that kind of thing comes out really quick in things like marriage and interpersonal relationships.
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