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.

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

You don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t pushed. Nobody knows. I did it the way I did it, and it worked. Above all, it worked.

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...

Order and disorder’, said the speaker, ‘they each have their beauty.

I saw what Andrew did in our family. I saw that he came in and listened and watched and understood who we were, each individual one of us. He tried to discover our need and...

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...

He spent the afternoon alone in the streets.

If you asked me to marry you all over again today I’d say yes, said Valentine.And if I had only met you for the first time today, I’d ask.

My father once told methat there are no gods;only the cruel manipulationsof evil peoplewho pretended that their power was goodand their exploitation was love.But if there are no gods;why are we so hungry to believe...

Soldiers can sometimes make decisions that are smarter than the orders they’ve been given.

What a waste of time to be posthumously famous.

A regime that wraps itself in the flag of truth fears truth most of all, for if its story is falsified to the slightest degree, its authority is gone.

And the voice of God was in the whirlwind after all, said Thor

That is the earth, he thought. Not a globe thousands of kilometers around, but a forest with a shining lake, a house hidden at the crest of a hill, high in the trees, a grassy...

…you seemed to be listening to me, not to find out useful information, but to try to catch me in a logical fallacy. This tells us all that you are used to being smarter than...

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...

It didn’t matter he was brilliant and dedicated and good. He was a child. He was young.No he isn’t, thought Ender. Small, yes. Bur Bean has been through a battle with a whole army depending...

They’re so brave,” she said. “They’re all dead.” “Only a coward would think of that,” she said scornfully.

Graff had isolated Ender to make him struggle. To make him prove, not that he was competent, but that he was far better than everyone else. That was the only way he could win respect...

Ender didn’t like fighting. He didn’t like Peter’s kind, the strong against the weak, and he didn’t like his own kind either, the smart against the stupid.

It will hurt.” said Petra. “But let’s make the most of what we have, and not let future pain ruin present happiness.

That’s the problem with winning right from the start, thought Ender. you lose friends.

What we’ve done is make the categories of science fiction and fantasy larger, freer, and more inclusive than any other genre of contemporary literature. We have room for everybody, and we are extraordinarily open to...

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...

(Rigg) had often complained that all these languages were useless, and Father had only said, “A man who speaks but one language understands none.

Was that tragedy? Or was that comedy? Was there really any difference?

You honor our humble abode,’ said Bean.’I do, don’t I,’ said Peter with a smile.

If God created our will, then he’s responsible for every choice we make… So– as I recall, the official philosophical answer is that free will doesn’t exist. Only the illusion of free will, because the...

It had to be a trick or you couldn’t have done it.

As often I have been a science fiction writer writing science fiction for the community of science fiction readers, I am also, for good or ill, an American writing American literature to an American audience....

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.

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.

If you did not in your own mind distinguish between useful and erroneous information, then you were not learning at all, you were merely replacing ignorance with false belief, which was no improvement.

Then, as Father had trained him, Rigg thought past his feelings.

So from then on, he looked at all his choices and said, What would a good person do, and then did it. But he has now learned something very important about human nature. If you...

When it comes down to it, though, the real decision is inevitable: If one of us has to be destroyed, let’s make damn sure we’re the ones alive at the end.

Scholars don’t have blood flowing in their veins,” said Hamlet. “When they’re wounded, they bleed logic, and when all of it is gone, their brains die, and they become … soldiers.

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.

What a laugh, though. To think that one human being could ever really know another. You could get used to each other, get so habituated that you could speak their words right along with them,...

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.

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

You’re bigger than I remember,” she said stupidly.”You too,” he said. “I also remember that you were beautiful.””Memory does play tricks on us.””No. Your face is the same, but I don’t remember what beautiful means...

You made them hate me.” Said Ender”So? What will you do about it? Crawl in a corner? Start kissing their little backsides so they’ll love you again? There’s only one thing that will make them...

I didn’t know how you’d get us out of that last one. But you did. You were good.

I’ll go from world to world until I find a time and place where you can come awake in safety. And I’ll tell your story to my people, so that perhaps in time the can...

But most of those to whom Ender’s Game feels most important are those who, like me, feel themselves to be perpetually outside their most beloved communities, never able to come inside and feel confident of...

Could you possibly be a little more incoherent?” asked Olivenko. “There are bits of this I’m almost understanding, and I’m sure that’s not what you have in mind.

Sometimes happiness consists of finding the right balance of misery.

The lives of all people flow through time, and, regardless of how brutal one moment may be, how filled with grief or pain or fear, time flows through all lives equally.