"With "gay marriage," the last shreds of meaning will be stripped away from marriage, with homosexuals finishing what faithless, selfish heterosexuals have begun."

"That's why he hates you, because you didn't suffer when he tried to punish you."

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

"There are times when the world is rearranging itself, and at times like that, the right words can change the world."

"History's got no bows on it, only frayed ends of ribbons and knots that can't be untied."

"...You believe that the kind of story you want to tell might be best received by the science fiction and fantasy audience. I hope you're right, because in many ways this is the best audience in the world to write for. They're open-minded and intelligent. They want to think as well as feel, understand as well as dream. Above all, they want to be led into places that no one has ever visited before. It's a privilege to tell stories to these readers, and an honour when they applaud the tale you tell."

"Valentine went back to class without answering. That night Demosthenes published a scathing denunciation of the population limitation laws. People should be allowed to have as many children as they like, and the surplus population should be sent to other worlds, to spread mankind so far across the galaxy that no danger, no invasion could ever threaten the human race with annihilation. "The most noble title any child can have," Demosthenes wrote, "is Third."

"Andrew said you were the best person he ever knew.""He reached that conclusion before he saw me raise three barbarian children to adulthood. I understand your mother has six.""Right.""And you're the oldest.""Yes.""That's too bad. Parents always make their worst mistakes with the oldest children. That's when parents know the least and care the most, so they're more likely to be wrong and also more likely to insist that they're right."

"You know how writers are... they create themselves as they create their work. Or perhaps they create their work in order to create themselves."

"The priests say that God created our souls, and that just puts us under the control of another puppeteer. If God created our will, then he's responsible for every choice we make."

"Ender had come to feel a unity so strong that the word we came to his lips much more easily than I."

"No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one's life is nothing. Even the most evil of men and women, if you understand their hearts, had some generous act that redeems them, at least a little, from their sins."

"We pray for a messenger from God-who knows but what the messenger also prayed for a place to take his message?"

"Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along--the same person that I am today. I never felt that I spoke childishly. I never felt that my emotions and desires were somehow less real than adult emotions and desires. And in writing _Ender's Game_, I forced the audience to experience the lives of these children from that perspective--the perspective in which their feelings and decisions are just as real and important as any adult's. ... _Ender's Game_ asserts the personhood of children, and those who are used to thinking of children in another way ... are going to find _Ender's Game_ a very unpleasant place to live."

"Is it some law of human nature that you inevitably become whatever your first commander was?"

"Let's fly away and live forever."

"The memory of the pain did not destroy the reality of the pleasure, grief did not obliterate joy."

"There's only one thing that will make them stop hating you. And that's being so good at what you do that they can't ignore you."

"I cut the wood however I like, but it's the grain that decides the strength and shape of it. You can add and subtract memories from people, but it isn't just your memory that makes you who you are. There's something in the grain of the mind."

"I will remember this, thought Ender, when I am defeated. To keep dignity, and give honor where it's due, so that defeat is not disgrace. And I hope I don't have to do it often."

"I think you don't grow up until you stop worrying about other people's purposes or lack of them and find the purposes you believe in for yourself."

"If you can cheat, so can I. I won't let you beat me unfairly - I'll beat you unfairly first."

"In a way she actually preferred Peter to other people because of this. He always acted out of intelligent self-interest."

"I stole their future from them, I can only being to repay by seeing what I can learn from their past."

"There was no doubt now in Ender's mind. There was no help for him. Whatever he faced, now and forever, no on ewould save him from it. Peter might be scum, but Peter had been right, always right; the power to cause pain is the only power that matters, the power to kill and destroy, because if you can't kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one will ever save you."

"You don't have to eat the entire turd to know that it's not a crab cake."

"All these uses a valid; all these reading of the book are "correct". For all these readers have placed themselves inside this story, not as spectators, but as participants, and so have looked at the world of Ender's Game, not with my eyes only, but also with their own."

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

"In my view, suicide is not really a wish for life to end.'What is it then?'It is the only way a powerless person can find to make everybody else look away from his shame. The wish is not to die, but to hide."

"Mine mine mine. That was the curse and power of human beings-that what they saw and loved they had to have. They could share it with other people but only if they conceived of those people as being somehow their own. What we own is ours. What you own should also be ours. In fact, you own nothing, if we want it. Because you are nothing. We are the real people, you are only posing as people in order to try to deprive us of what God means us to have."

"Ethan Wyeth: I hope you're thirsty."Gideon Wyeth:"Why?"Ethan: "Cause your dumb and ugly, but I can do something about thirsty."

"We are only human when we are part of a community. ... I tried to isolate you, but it could not be done. I surrounded you with hostility; you took most of your enemies and rivals and made friends of them. ... You were a part of them; they carried you inside them all their lives."

"Maybe that's who you are, what you remember."

"A lot of human behavior was really acting out our responses to dangers long past."

"He spent the afternoon alone in the streets."

"It's called civilization. Women invented it, and every time you men blow it all to bits, we just invent it again."

"Besides," said Suriyawong. "This was not a rescue operation.""What was it, target practice? Chinese skeet?""An offer of transportation to an invited guest of the Hegemon," said Suriyawong. "And the loan of a knife."Achilles held up the bloody thing, dangling it from the point. "Yours?" he asked."Unless you want to clean it," said Suriyawong.Achillese handed it to him. Suriyawong took out his cleaning kit and wiped down the blade, then began to polish it."You wanted me to die," said Achilles quietly."I expected you to solve your own problems," said Suriyawong."

"You frighten me, when you say there isn't time.""I don't see why. Christians have been expecting the imminent end of the world for millennia.""But it keeps not ending.""So far, so good."

"I was born with more power inside myself than I ever dreamed. But along with it there came no more sense than any other idiotic kid. Somewhere along in here I need to grow up into a man I can stand to live with. A man who doesn't just survive, but deserves to."

"And then he thought: Is this how idiots rationalize their stupidity to themselves?"

"I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it."

"If words can be lethal weapons, I must provide them with an arsenal."

"I want to see the king," I said, after explaining who I was."Wonderful," said the ancient Nkumai who sat on a cushion near the corner pole of the house. "I'm glad for you."That was all, and apparently he meant to say no more. "Why are you so glad?" I asked."Because it's good for every human being to have an unfulfilled wish. It makes all of life so poignant."

"Just because they didn't know they were killing human beings doesn't mean they weren't killing human beings."

"I will never hurt you.I will always help you.If you are hungryIll give you my food.If you are frightenedI am your friend.I love you now.And love does not end."

"Who would expect less?" she said. " You're a Wiggin." " Whatever that means." He said. " It means that you are going to make a difference in the world."

"America's intellectual community has never been very bright. Or honest. They're all sheep, following whatever the intellectual fashion of the decade happens to be. Demanding that everyone follow their dicta in lockstep. Everyone has to be open-minded and tolerant of the things they believe, but God forbid they should ever concede, even for a moment, that someone who disagrees with them might have some fingerhold of truth."

"America. The enemy. The rival. The land of jeans and rock and roll, of crime and capitalism, of poverty and oppression. Of home and freedom."

"So I don't even get a chance to learn before I'm being judged."

"Home was merely a dull ache in the back of his memory. A tiredness in his eyes."