I’ve had enough adventures,” said Noxon, “to know that boredom is the closest thing to happiness. Boredom means that there’s nothing wrong. You’re not hungry, you’re not in pain. Nobody’s making any demands on you....

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...

Because here’s the thing―we don’t give a shit about fairness here. We’re soldiers. Soldiers do not give the other guy a sporting chance. Soldiers shoot in the back, lay traps and ambushes, lie to the...

You deplore what I did, but you still want to know the results of my research.

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...

Your motivation has to be rock solid. You have to want it so bad that even th threat of death won’t take it from you.

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...

I’ve got a pretty good idea what children are, and we’re not children. Children can lose sometimes, and nobody cares.

Of course, he didn’t know anything about these Indonesians, or why they would have been there at this moment to save his life, but the fact that they had guns and weren’t firing them at...

Being here alone with nothing to do, I’ve been thinking about myself too. Trying to understang why I hate myself so badly.

She remembered the story from her childhood, about Adam and Eve in the garden, and the talking snake. Even as a little girl she had said – to the consternation of her family – What...

Aw, Poke, you poor, kind, decent, stupid girl. You saved me and I let you down.

He had so much damn respect he wanted to scream.

The only process you’ve mastered is the process of elimination, and the only reason you’ve mastered that is because you can do it in the toilet.

I’ll have that someday, thought Peter. Someone who’ll kiss me good-bye at the door. Or maybe just someone to put a blindfold over my head before they shoot me. Depending on how things turn out.

I don’t think it has anything to do with truth, Olhado. It’s just cause and effect. We never can sort them out. Science refuses to admit any cause except first cause-knock down one domino, the...

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

You’re like, both like, Alexander the Great.’We can’t both be Alexander.’Well sometimes I think you’re two side of the same coin, and I’m the metal in between.

A person is what he says and does; that’s how you learn whether his reputation was earned or manufactured.

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

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.

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’ll become exactly the tool you want me to be, said Ender silently, but at least I wont be fooled into it. I’ll do it because I choose to, not because you tricked me, you...

You’re a monster.Thanks. Does this mean I get a raise?No, just a medal. The budget isn’t inexhaustable.

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...

A Great Rabbi stands, teaching in the marketplace. It happens that a husband finds proof that morning of his wife’s adultery, and a mob carries her to the marketplace to stone her to death.There is...

While you’re governing the colony and I’m writing political philosophy, They’ll never guess that in the darkness of night we sneak into each other’s room and play checkers and have pillow fights.

You take a step, then another. That’s the journey. But to take a step with your eyes open is not a journey at all, it’s a remaking of your own mind.

I’m hurting you to make you a better soldier in every way. To sharpen your wit. To intensify your effort. To keep you off balance, never sure what’s going to happen next, so you always...

But in the military you don’t get trusted positions just because of your ability. You also have to attract the notice of superior officers. You have to be liked. You have to fit in with...

The story is one that you and I will construct together in your memory. If the story means anything to you at all, then when you remember it afterward, think of it, not as something...

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

Maybe that’s all demons ever are. People like us, doing things without even knowing what we’re doing.

But it was not the boyish grin she had known when he bounded along the low-gravity inner corridors of Battle School. This smile had weariness in it, and old fears long mastered but still present....

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.

Guils is the greatest weapon vecause its cuts rarely heal and it aims for the heart

But shouldn’t they still act like children? They aren’t normal. They act like–history. Napoleon and Wellington. Caesar and Brutus.

He splashed into the water, his whole body, not with the reverent attitude of prayer, but with a desperate thirst; he buried his head under the water and drank deep, with his cheek against the...

Religion is tied to the deepest feelings people have. The love that arises from that stewing pot is the sweetest and strongest, but the hate is the hottest, and the anger is the most violent.

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...

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...

All dreams. If there was love or pity for him, it was only in his dreams.

Asking a man if he could be trusted was like asking an unwed girl if she was a virgin. The question mattered, but the asking of it was gross insult.

It was not right, thought Han Fei-tzu, for his wife to die before him: her ancestor-of-the-heart had outlived her husband. Besides, wives should live longer than husbands. Women were more complete inside themselves. They were...

So the whole war is because we can’t talk to each other.

Human: That’s stupid. Isn’t there grass on both sides?

Among my most prized possessions are words that I have never spoken.

Madness, and then illumination.

Government is all show when it isn’t murder in the dark … or soldiers in the open.

Vanya soon found that America might be an exciting place to arrive, but living there could become, in time, as boring as anything else.