Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.
If you try and lose then it isn't your fault. But if you don't try and we lose, then it's all your fault.
Ethan Wyeth: I hope you're thirsty." Gideon Wyeth:"Why?" Ethan: "Cause your dumb and ugly, but I can do something about thirsty.
I don't care if I pass your test, I don't care if I follow your rules. If you can cheat, so can I. I won't let you beat me unfairly - I'll beat you unfairly first. - Ender
It's called civilization. Women invented it, and every time you men blow it all to bits, we just invent it again.
This is how humans are: We question all our beliefs, except for the ones that we really believe in, and those we never think to question.
Remember, the enemy's gate is down.
I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.
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.
Sometimes lies were more dependable than the truth.
When you really know somebody you can’t hate them. Or maybe it’s just that you can’t really know them until you stop hating them.
Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf.
Early to bed and early to rise," Mazer intoned, "makes a man stupid and blind in the eyes.
You're a monster. Thanks. Does this mean I get a raise? No, just a medal. The budget isn't inexhaustable.
Ender Wiggin isn't a killer. He just wins—thoroughly.
I also remembered that you were beautiful." "Memory does play tricks on us." "No. Your face is the same, but I don't remember what beautiful means anymore.
There are times when the world is rearranging itself, and at times like that, the right words can change the world.
I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it.
Peter, you're twelve years old. I'm ten. They have a word for people our age. They call us children and they treat us like mice.
Among my most prized possessions are words that I have never spoken.
Life is full of grief, to exactly the degree we allow ourselves to love other people.
The wise are not wise because they make no mistakes. They are wise because they correct their mistakes as soon as they recognize them.
I need you to be clever, Bean. I need you to think of solutions to problems we haven't seen yet. I want you to try things that no one has ever tried because they're absolutely stupid.
Love is finding that the things you like best about yourself are not in you at all, but in the person who completes you
So the whole war is because we can't talk to each other.
Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.
Human beings may be miserable specimens, in the main, but we can learn, and, through learning, become decent people.
Fiction, because it is not about somebody who actually lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself.
He could see Bonzo's anger growing hot. Hot anger was bad. Ender's anger was cold, and he could use it. Bonzo's was hot, and so it used him.
Changing the world is good for those who want their names in books. But being happy, that is for those who write their names in the lives of others, and hold the hearts of others as the treasure most dear.
You know how writers are... they create themselves as they create their work. Or perhaps they create their work in order to create themselves.
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.
Home is anywhere that you know all your friends and all your enemies.
We have to go. I'm almost happy here.
Happiness is not a life without pain, but rather a life in which the pain is traded for a worthy price.
I've watched through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and I tell you he's the one.
We don't read novels to have an experience like life. Heck, we're living lives, complete with all the incompleteness. We turn to fiction to have an author assure us that it means something.
My needs are simple and few, thought Valentine. Food. Clothing. A comfortable place to sleep. And no idiots. But of course a world with no idiots would be lonely. If she herself were even allowed there.
We're all trying to decide whether your scores up there are a miracle or a mistake." "A habit.
Madness, and then illumination.
Please don't disillusion me. I haven't had breakfast yet.
I'm putting you in Dink Meeker's toon. From now on, as far as you're concerned, Dink Meeker is God." "Then who are you?" "The personnel officer who hired God.
As long as you keep getting born, it's all right to die sometimes
Since when do you have to tell the enemy when he has won
For children love is a feeling; for adults, it is a decision. Children wait to learn if their love is true by seeing how long it lasts; adults make their love true by never wavering from their commitment.
Personal affection is a luxury you can have only after all your enemies are eliminated. Until then, everyone you love is a hostage, sapping your courage and corrupting your judgment.
I will never hurt you. I will always help you. If you are hungry Ill give you my food. If you are frightened I am your friend. I love you now. And love does not end.
I'm crazy," said Ender. "But I think I'm OK.
At last he came to a door, with these words in glowing emeralds: THE END OF THE WORLD He did not hesitate. He opened the door and stepped through.
All the stories are fictions. What matters is which fiction you believe.
You’re not a human being until you value something more than the life of your body. And the greater the thing you live and die for the greater you are.
Soldiers can sometimes make decisions that are smarter than the orders they've been given.
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.
And enough for me that when my hand touched your shoulder, you leaned on me; and when you felt me slip away, you called my name.
And then he thought: Is this how idiots rationalize their stupidity to themselves?
One mind can think only of its own questions; it rarely surprises itself.
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.
Knowledge is just opinion that you trust enough to act upon.
Parents always make their worst mistakes with their 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.
The future is a hundred thousand threads, but the past is a fabric that can never be rewoven.
I taught you everything you know. But I didn't teach you everything I know.
Being young is an 18 year prison sentence for a crime your parents committed. But you do get time off for good behavior.
Every person is defined by the communities she belongs to.
We're like the wicked witch. We promise gingerbread, then eat the little brats alive.
The opposite of the happy ending is not actually the sad ending--the sad ending is sometimes the happy ending. The opposite of the happy ending is actually the unsatisfying ending.
You killed more people than anybody in history." "Be the best at whatever you do, that's what my mother always told me.
If you listen very carefully, you can hear the good fairy come in the night and leave our assignment for tomorrow.
It's as if every conversation with a woman was a test, and men always failed it, because they always lacked the key to the code and so they never quite understood what the conversation was really about.
Everybody dies. What matters is what you do between now and when it happens to you.
I didn't want to see you." "They told me." "I was afraid that I'd still love you." "I hoped that you would.
The enemy gate is down.
He loved her, as you can only love someone who is an echo of yourself at your time of deepest sorrow.
What else should you be? Human beings didn't evolve brains in order to lie around on lakes. Killing's the first thing we learned. And a good thing we did, or we'd be dead, and the tigers would own the earth.
It will hurt." said Petra. "But let's make the most of what we have, and not let future pain ruin present happiness.
Into the the air, into the earth, into the fire, I am with you.
None of us could be happy for long, doing nothing.
In order to learn, one must change one's mind.
We care about moral issues, nobility, decency, happiness, goodness—the issues that matter in the real world, but which can only be addressed, in their purity, in fiction.
An eye for an eye? How Christian of you.' Unbelievers always want other people to act like Christians.
I'm not stupid!" In Bean's experience, that was a sentence never uttered except to prove its own inaccuracy.
No book, however good, can survive a hostile reading.
Science Fiction has rivets, fantasy has trees.
Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to fill the roles given you by good people, by people who love you.
Sickness and healing are in every heart; death and deliverance in every hand.
 audience for literature because they have no patience with pretence. ){kind=small}
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.
Faith doesn't mean you never doubt. It only means you never act upon your doubts.
We need a Napoleon. An Alexander. Except that Napoleon lost in the end, and Alexander flamed out and died young. We need a Julius Caesar, except that he made himself a dictator, and died for it.
Thank you for this, Peter. For dry eyes and silent weeping. You taught me how to hide anything I felt. More than ever, I need that now.
The only way to retrieve a secret,once known, is to replace it with a lie.
People will always go. Always. They always believe the can make a better life than in the old world. What the hell, maybe they can.
It's what I was born for, isn't it? If I don't go, why am I alive?
I always think of books as being like people. Even the dull ones are worthy of decent respect, but you don't have to seek them out and spend time with them.
Everyone dies. Everyone leaves. What matters is the things you build together before they go. What matters is the part of them that continues in you when they're gone.
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.
Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender.
Isn’t that what it means to be civilized? That you can wait to get what you want?
When you have a good romance, find ways to make their lives miserable and hellish...Do you think 'Titanic' would have been so popular if they had both lived? Not a prayer.
A broken clock is right two times a day.
Yesterday someone sent a message that was signed GOD! bernard said. really? dap said. i didn't know he was signed onto the system
The essence of training is to allow error without consequence.
