"Death is not a tragedy to the one who dies; to have wasted the life before that death, that is the tragedy."

"I can see by your face that I'll never persuade you. And that's surprising, because usually you at least try to see my side."I can see your side," said Cecily. "I've got a much clearer view of it than you do, from over here on my side."

"When you have wisdom that another person knows that he needs, you give it freely. But when the other person doesn't yet know that he needs your wisdom you keep it to yourself. Food only looks good to a hungry man."

"I buy way too many books."

"You were the one who threatened us with an Inquisitor," the Bishop reminded him. With a smile.The Speaker's smile was just as chilly. "And you're the one who told the people I was Satan and they shouldn't talk to me."

"Better to have the trust of the people than their respect. With trust, their respect could be earned later; without it, respect could never be deserved, and so to have it would be like poison."

"He had brought no possessions with him, he would take none away. There were none to have--everything of value was in the school computer or his own head and hands."

"Every day people judge all other people. The question is whether they judge wisely."

"I would follow such beauty, said something inside Ender. I would see as those eyes see."

"Twisted and perverse are the ways of the human mind," Jane intoned. "Pinocchio was such a dolt to try to become a real boy. He was much better off with a wooden head."

"Hive Queen: So many of your people are becoming Christians. Believing in the god these humans brought with them.Human: You don't believe in God?Hive Queen: The question never came up. We have always remembered how we began.Human: You evolved. We were created.Hive Queen: By a virus.Human: By a virus that God created in order to create us.Hive Queen: So you, too, are a believer.Human: I understand belief.Hive Queen: No-you desire belief.Human: I desire it enough to act as if I believed. Maybe that's what faith is.Hive Queen: Or deliberate insanity."

"[That wall] might be breached sometime in the future, but for now the only real conversation between them was the roots that had already grown low and deep, under the wall, where they could not be broken.The most terrible thing, though, was the fear that the wall could never be breached, that in his heart Alai was glad of the separation, and was ready to be Ender's enemy. For now that they could not be together, they must be infinitely apart, and what had been sure and unshakable was now fragile and insubstantial; from the moment we are not together, Alai is a stranger, for he has a life now that will be no part of mine, and that means that when I see him we will not know each other."

"And I began to suspect that the ultimate sacrifice isn't death after all, the ultimate sacrifice is willingly bearing the fullest penalty for your own actions."

"Ender nodded. It was a lie, of course, that it wouldn't hurt a bit. But since adults always said it when it was going to hurt, he could count on that statement as an accurate prediction of the future. Sometimes lies were more dependable than the truth."

"There are rules to everything, even if nobody made them up, even if nobody calls it a game. And if you want things to work out well, it's best to know the rules and only break them if you're playing a different game and following those rules."

"Everything we do means something."

"Everything important in sci-fi showed up in the magazines first. It's the proving ground for new writers and new ideas."

"...What I depend on is a vigorous audience that can discover sweetness and light, beauty and truth, beyond the ability of the artist, on his own, to create them."

"It's the middle class that feels the luxury of being able to have causes."

"For the first time, Ender had found a living mind he could admire."

"[T]hat's the way of torturers of every age, to put the blame on the victim, especially when he strikes back."

"I once heard a tale of a man who split himself in two.The one part never changed at all; the other grew and grew.The changeless part was always true, The growing part was always new,And I wondered, when the tale was through, Which part was me, and which was you."

"The most important training, though, is to experience life as a writer, questioning everything, inventing multiple explanations for everything. If you do that, all the other things will come; if you don't, there's no hope for you."

"It's a stupid leader who can't turn follower when somebody offers him a wiser course."

"Don't make fun of me!" Ender said. "I'm afraid I'm going crazy."

"Because these fools always look up for power. People above you, they never want to share power with you. Why you look to them? They give you nothing. People below you, you give them hope, you give them respect, they give you power, cause they don't think they have any, so they don't mind giving it up."

"She likes us, said Umbo. "I know, I could feel it too, said Rigg. "She's really glad to have us here. I think she loves us like her own children. "Whom she murdered and cut up into the stew. "They were delicious."

"You accomplish exactly as much as the people who serve you decide you'll accomplish, and nothing more."

"Of course, I also hear from critics who detest what I do, and while sometimes I feel rather proud of having made various the loathsome people or groups angry, at other times I wonder why I put up with such grief."

"Ender began to eat, slowly and carefully, pretending not to notice he was the center of attention."

"I thought speakers didn't believe in sin," said a sullen boy.Andrew smiled. "You believe in sin, Styrka, and you do things because of that belief. So sin is real in you, and knowing you, this speaker must believe in sin."

"I know, you've been here a year, you think these people are normal. Well, they're not. WE'RE not. I look in the library, I call up books on my desk. Old ones, because they won't let us have anything new, but I've got a pretty good idea what children are, and we're not children. Children can lose sometimes, and nobody cares. Children aren't in armies, they aren't COMMANDERS, they don't rule over forty other kids, it's more than anybody can take and not get crazy."

"We need you to help us figure out how you can help us."

"In philosophy class I think we finally decided that 'good' is an infinitely recursive term - it can't be defined except in terms of itself. Good is good because it's better than bad, though why it's better to be good than bad depends on how you define good, and on and on."

"I didn't want to hurt him!" Ender cried. "Why didn't he just leave me alone!"

"Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be."

"When you hear a true story, there is a part of you that responds to it regardless of art, regardless of evidence. Let it be the most obvious fabrication and you will still believe whatever truth is in it, because you can not deny truth no matter how shabbily it is dressed."

"There's always moral instruction whether the writer inserts it deliberately or not. The least effective moral instruction in fiction is that which is consciously inserted. Partly because it won't reflect the storyteller's true beliefs, it will only reflect what he BELIEVES he believes, or what he thinks he should believe or what he's been persuaded of. But when you write without deliberately expressing moral teachings, the morals that show up are the ones you actually live by. The beliefs that you don't even think to question, that you don't even notice-- those will show up. And that tells much more truth about what you believe than your deliberate moral machinations."

"In my dreams," said Ender, "I'm never sure whether I'm really me."

"Do not be disingenuous with me, Colonel Graff. Americans are quite apt at playing stupid when they choose to, but I am not to be deceived."

"Never believe a rumor of my death,' said Peter. 'I have as many lives as a cat. Also as many teeth, as many claws, and the same cheery, cooperative disposition."

"So the I.F. is spying on Earth.""Just as a mother spies on her children at play in the yard.""Good to know you're looking out for us, Mummy."

"I would carry some of it if I could, Bean said silently. Like I did today, you can turn it over to me and I'll do it, if I can. You don't have to do this alone.Only even as he thought this, Bean knew it wasn't true. If it could be done, Ender was the one who would have to do it. All those months when Bean refused to see Ender, hid from him, it was because he couldn't bear to face the fact that Ender was what Bean only wished to be - the kind of person on whom you could put all your hopes, who could carry all your fears, and he would not let you down, would not betray you.I want to be the kind of boy you are, thought Bean. But I don't want to go through what you've been through to get there."

"In America, film is the highest form of art that the public aspires to. People will come to me and say 'Oh, your book was so good, they ought to make a movie out of it!' To which I reply 'Well, why? It's already a book."

"I know I'm a Third, I know it, if you want I'll go away so you don't have to be embarrassed in front of everybody, I'm sorry I lost the monitor and now you have three kids and no obvious explanation, so inconvenient for you, I'm sorry sorry sorry."

"It is easy to say that you can adopt the whole human race as your children, but it is not the same as living in a home with a child and shaping all you do to help him learn to be happy and whole and good. Don't live your life without ever holding a child in your arms, on your lap, in your home, and feeling a child's arms around you and hearing his voice in your ear and seeing his smile, given to you because you put it into your heart."

"The lies we live will always be confessed in the stories that we tell."

"We've decided that your birthday present will be a car", said Marion.Danny was touched. "But the thing I can't figure out is, why would I need a new car?""You can't very well gate a girl to the movies, Danny," Leslie replied."I think you're overlooking the biggest point here," said Danny. "I don't need a CAR so I can date. I need a GIRL."

"By deciding that they would study only that which could be verified under controlled conditions, they had merely limited their field of endeavor. Most truth lay outside the neat confines of science...."

"Anything can become a children's book if you give it to a child...Children are actually the best (and worst) audience for literature because they have no patience with pretence."