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.

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.

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...

Oh no, real life is escape. The great terrors, the horrors–we hope–of your life come from reading fiction.

Those eyes had seen people weep, and had cared, and had hurt them again anyway. It’s a look that no human eyes should ever have.

The commercial work of today is the classics of tomorrow.

I believe what Jesus said was, ‘I the Lord will forgive whom I will forgive. But of you it is required that you forgive all men.

Sometimes lies are more dependable than the truth.

I came because I’ve spent my whole life in the company of the brother that I hated. Now I want a chance to know the brother that I love, before it’s too late, before we’re...

—No me digas «No, Ender». He tardado mucho tiempo en darme cuenta de ello, pero créeme, me odiaba, me odio. Y todo se reduce a esto: en el momento en el que entiendo a mi...

A good commander, thought Ender, doesn’t have to make stupid threats.

With life. Rooter says that life is how God gives purpose to the universe.

…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.

That’s what so many people didn’t understand about life. The real world is the one within the walls of homes; the outside world, of careers and politics and money and fame, that was the fake...

She had always thought that if only people could communicate mind-to-mind, eliminating the ambiguities of language, then understanding would be perfect and there’d be no more needless conflicts. Instead she had discovered that rather than...

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.

With false names, on the right nets, they could be anybody. Old men, middle-aged women, anybody, as long as they were careful about the way they wrote. All that anyone would see were the words,...

Remember, I’m the only person her who’s paid to be nice to you. But not too nice. Give me any lip and I’ll break your face. OK?

Never take another human being to the third life, because we don’t know how to go.

Quing-Jao: I am a slave to the gods, and I rejoice in it.Jane: A slave who rejoices is a slave indeed.

Life is full of grief, to exactly the degree we allow ourselves to love other people.

[No single] explanation will ever contain the final answer for all time, for all hearers. There is always, ALWAYS more to learn.

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

Hive Queen: They never know anything. They don’t have enough years in their little lives to come to an understanding of anything at all. And yet they think they understand. From earliest childhood, they delude...

we have some good ideas here. But the only way to know if they’re workable is to try to make them fail. If we fail to fail, then maybe we’re on the right track.

O my son Absalom,’ Bean said softly, knowing for the first time the kind of anguish that could tear such words from a man’s mouth. ‘my son, my son Absalom. Would God I could die...

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

Miro, I’m so sorry. I always felt such pity for you humans because you could only think of one thing at a time and your memories were so imperfect and . . . now I...

I don’t care how much you eat, Ender, self-cannibalism won’t get you out of this school.

The wise are not wise because they make no mistakes. They are wise because they correct their mistakes as soon as they recognize them.

Home is anywhere that you know all your friends and all your enemies.

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

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...

Achilles might be a good papa to the family, but he was also a killer, and he never forgives.Poke knew that, though. Bean warned her, and she knew it, but she chose Achilles for their...

Carn Carby left, and ender mentally added him to his private list of people who also qualified as human beings.

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

As Sarah watched them (Abraham and Isaac) move briskly along, she thought of the whole journey behind her. Her childhood in the Ur-of-the North, the temple of Asherah, her father’s house, the Euphrates in flood...

When a brother is given the right to pass into the third life as a father, then he chooses his greatest rival or his truest friend to give him passage. You. Speaker—ever since I first...

I have hope for you, if only because you’re the only one left to hope for.

Nights were so real that days began to seem dreamlike to him

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...

The future is a hundred thousand threads, but the past is a fabric that can never be rewoven.

The kid is scary.

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...

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...

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

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.

I know that you are wise. When you hear a true story, there is a part of you that responds to it regardless of art, regardless of evidence…You believe that the story is true, because...