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He Walked Down The Corridor, Lined With His Soldiers, Who Looked At Him With Love, With Awe, With Trust. Except Bean, Who Looked At Him With Anguish. Ender Wiggin Was Not Larger Than Life, Bean Knew. He Was Exactly Life-sized, And So His Larger-than-life Burden Was Too Much For Him. And Yet He Was Bearing It. So Far.

-Orson Scott Card

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He Walked Down The

Orson Scott Card

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He Walked Down The Corridor, Lined With His Soldiers, Who Looked At Him With Love, With Awe, With Trust. Except Bean, Who Looked At Him With Anguish. Ender Wiggin Was Not Larger Than Life, Bean Knew. He Was Exactly Life-sized, And So His Larger-than-life Burden Was Too Much For Him. And Yet He Was Bearing It. So Far.

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Larger Than Life

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. . . All These Readers Have Placed Themselves Inside This Story, Not As Spectators, But As Participants, And So Have Looked At The World, Not With My Eyes Only, But Also With Their Own.

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 Slope Leading Upwards From The Water, Fish Leaping And Birds Strafing To Take The Bugs That Lived At The Border Between Water And Sky. Earth Was The Constant Noise Of Crickets, And Winds, And Birds

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I Wonder Sometimes If The Motivation For Writers Ought To Be Contempt, Not Admiration.

But If You Caught My Informant,' Said Achilles, 'why In The World Would Chamrajnagar—or Graff, If It Was Him—launch The Shuttle Anyway? Was Catching Me Doing Something Naughty So Important They’d Risk A Shuttle And It’s Crew Just To Catch Me? I Find That Quite… Flattering. Sort Of Like Winning The Nobel Prize For Scariest Villain.

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Once You Duct-tape A Ziploc Bag To A Man's Chest, There's No Going Back.

Surely You're Not Saying That God Had To Choose Between Long Life And Intelligence For Human Beings! It's There In Your Own Bible, Carlotta. Two Trees - Knowledge And Life. You Eat Of The Tree Of Knowledge And You Will Surely Die. You Eat Of The Tree Of Life And You Remain A Child In The Garden Forever, Undying.

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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.

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 Really Believe To Be True About Themselves; And All Of Them Lies.

Perhaps You Don't Desire Poetry As Much As You Would Like To Have My Torchy Knowledge Of Your Possible Futures, But I Dare Say Poetry Will Do You Far More Good. For Knowing The Future Only Makes You Timid And Complacent By Turns, While Poetry Can Shape You Into The Kind Of Souls Who Can Face Any Future With Boldness And Wisdom And Nobility, So That You Need Not Know The Future At All, So That Any Future Will Be An Opportunity For Greatness, If You Have Greatness In You.

Don't Lie To Me! Don't Seem So Normal When I Know You Have Cut Yourself Off From Me In Your Heart! If You Can Put On Our Affectionate Closeness Like A Mask, Then I'll Never Be Able To Take Joy In It Again.

He Is Dead, She Thought Bitterly, Because We Have Forgotten Him.

Does It Help If We're So Strong-willed, Stubborn, Ambitious, And Selfish That We Always Overcome Everything In Our Way No Matter What?" Asked Wang-mu. "i Think Those Are The Pertinent Virtues, Yes," Said Peter. "then Let's Do It. That's Us In Spades.

The World Was Full Of Locked Doors, And He Had To Get His Hand On Every Key.

The Education That Prepared Me Was My General Education Classes, Which I Tried To Avoid When I Was A Stupid Undergraduate, But Which Gave Me The Foundation Of General Knowledge That Makes A Career As A Writer Possible.

We Spend Our Lives Guessing At What's Going On Inside Everybody Else, And When We Happen To Get Lucky And Guess Right, We Think We 'understand.' Such Nonsense. Even A Monkey At A Computer Will Type A Word Now And Then.

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.

Good People Aren't Good Because They Never Cause Harm To Others. They're Good Because They Treat Others The Best Way They Know How, With The Understanding That They Have.

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 Disaster, No Invasion Could Ever Threaten The Human Race With Annihilation. "the Most Noble Title Any Child Can Have," Demosthenes Wrote, "is Third.

There Were Crimes And Quarrels, Alongside Kindness And Cooperation; There Were People Who Loved Each Other And People Who Did Not; It Was A Human World.

That Was Interesting, To Find That It Wasn't Hunger That Caused Children To Become Bullies On The Street. The Bulliness Was Already In The Child, And Whatever The Stakes Were, They Would Find A Way To Act As They Needed To Act. … Intelligence And Education, Which All These Children Had, Apparently Didn't Make Any Important Difference In Human Nature.

Sometimes Lies Were More Dependable Than The Truth.

A Character Is What He Does, Yes - But Even More, A Character Is What He Means To Do.

Bean Could See The Hunger In Their Eyes. Not The Regular Hunger, For Food, But The Real Hunger, The Deep Hunger, For Family, For Love, For Belonging.

For It Is In The Millions Of Small Melodies That The Truth Of History Is Always Found, For History Only Matters Because Of The Effects We See Or Imagine In The Lives Of The Ordinary People Who Are Caught Up In, Or Give Shape To, The Great Events.

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I Am Especially Grateful, However, To Have Known The Fifties, Before We Began To Poison Our Own Civilization - Or At Least Before The Effects Of The Poison Began To Be Felt.

If I Wanted To Doubt, Then I Could Doubt Endlessly, But At Some Point A Person Has To Stop Questioning And Act, And At That Point You Have To Trust Something To Be True. You Have To Act As If Something Is True, And So You Choose The Thing You Have The Most Reason To Believe In, You Have To Live In The World That You Have The Most Hope In.

Whether He Likes It Or Not, [he] Cannot Remain Incognito Forever. He Has Outraged Too Many Wise Men And Pleased Too Many Fools To Hide Behind His Too-appropriate Order To Assume Leadership Of The Forces Of Stupidity He Has Marshalled, Or His Enemies Will Unmask Him In Order To Better Understand The Disease That Has Produced Such A Warped And Twisted Mind.

His Vices Were The Vices Of His Time And Culture, But His Virtues Transcended The Milieu Of His Life.

No Book, However Good, Can Survive A Hostile Reading.

Ho Said, 'i Do Not Grieve Because My Feet Have Been Cut Off. I Grieve Because A Precious Jewel Is Dubbed A Mere Stone, And A Man Of Integrity Is Called A Deceiver. This Is Why I Weep.'

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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.

I've Seen Australia And I've Lived On An Asteroid And I'd Take The Asteroid.

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Today, Mr. Darcy Is A Vampire.

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Quim," She Said, "don't Ever Try To Teach Me About Good And Evil. I've Been There, And You've Seen Nothing But A Map.

I Have Hope For You, If Only Because You're The Only One Left To Hope For.

Darkness Bound Them Closer Than Light.

Once You Have The Gallows, You'll Find New Reasons To Hang People From It.

Ender Stepped Under The Water And Rinsed Himself, Took The Sweat Of Combat And Let It Run Down The Drain. All Gone, Except They Recycled It And We'll Be Drinking Bonzo's Blood Water In The Morning. All The Life Gone Out Of It, But His Blood Just The Same, His Blood And My Sweat, Washed Down In Their Stupidity Or Cruelty Or Whatever It Was That Made Them Let It Happen.

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Laws Against Homosexual Behavior Should Remain On The Books.

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I Be Crazy Too, Little Buddy, But At Least When I Be Craziest, I Be Floating All Alone In Space And The Crazy, She Float Out Of Me, She Soak Into The Walls, And She Don't Come Out Till There Be Battles And Little Boys Bump Into The Walls And Squish Out De Crazy.

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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.

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Home Is Anywhere That You Know All Your Friends And All Your Enemies.

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Soldiers Can Sometimes Make Decisions That Are Smarter Than The Orders They've Been Given.

Where Ideas Are Real And Reality Is Shadow.

Reasonable Argument Is Impossible When Authority Becomes The Arbiter.

So Let Me Tell You What I Think About Gods. I Think A Real God Is Not Going To Be So Scared Or Angry That He Tries To Keep Other People Down…a Real God Doesn’t Care About Control. A Real God Already Has Control Of Everything That Needs Controlling. Real Gods Would Want To Teach You How To Be Just Like Them.

If Only We Were Wiser Or Better People, Perhaps The Gods Would Explain To Us The Mad, Unbearable Things They Do.

Isn’t That What It Means To Be Civilized? That You Can Wait To Get What You Want?

I Have Lived In The Only Decades I Could Have Lived In, And Hope To Live Through At Least A Few More.

One Mind Can Think Only Of Its Own Questions; It Rarely Surprises Itself.

Death Is Not A Tragedy To The One Who Dies; To Have Wasted The Life Before That Death, That Is The Tragedy.

Withholding A Decision Is A Decision.

The Most Noble Title Any Child Can Have, Demosthenes Wrote, Is Third.

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.

I've Got A Pretty Good Idea What Children Are, And We're Not Children. Children Can Lose Sometimes, And Nobody Cares.

She Will Look At You As Women Look At Men, And She Will Judge You As A Woman Judge Men, Not On The Strength Of Their Arguments, And Not In Their Cleverness Or Prowess In Battle, But Rather On The Force Of Their Character, The Intensity Of Their Passion, Their Strength Of Soul, Their Compassion, And... Ah, This Above All... Their Conversation.

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It Is In The Turmoil Of Chaos That We Discover What, If Anything, We Are.

Ethan Wyeth: I Hope You're Thirsty." Gideon Wyeth:"why?" Ethan: "cause Your Dumb And Ugly, But I Can Do Something About Thirsty.

Knowledge Is Just Opinion That You Trust Enough To Act Upon.

Just Because The Only Way You Can Maintain Control Over Your Bodily Passions Is To Sit Straight In Your Chair, Knees Together, Hands Delicately Arranged In Our Lap, Fingers Tightly Intertwined, Does Not Mean That I Am Required To Do The Same.

All The Stories Are Fictions. What Matters Is Which Fiction You Believe.

Nobodys Life Ever Goes According To Plan. So Why Do We Keep On Planning? Because That's How We Know Who We Are. By What We Intend To Be. By What We Try To Become. And Fail. I Don't Say 'fail'. I Saw We Aim And Miss. But We Still Hit Something.

It's About Me, Or People Wouldn't Be So Anxious To Keep Me From Knowing About It. The Absence Of Information Is Information. ~ Ender

As Long As You Keep Getting Born, It's Alright To Die Some Times.

It Just Gripes Me Hollow, The Way God Always Sneaks In To Take The Credit.

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

Nobody Ever Completely Means What They Say. Even When They Think They're Telling The Truth, There's Always Something Hidden Behind Their Words.

Telling The Truth

Legalizing Gay Marriage Is Not About Making It Possible For Gay People To Become Couples. It's About Giving The Left The Power To Force Anti-religious Values On Our Children. Once They Legalize Gay Marriage, It Will Be The Bludgeon They Use To Make Sure That It Becomes Illegal To Teach Traditional Values In The Schools.

Laws Against Homosexual Behavior Should Remain On The Books, Not To Be Indiscriminately Enforced Against Anyone Who Happens To Be Caught Violating Them, But To Be Used When Necessary To Send A Clear Message That Those Who Flagrantly Violate Society's Regulation Of Sexual Behavior Cannot Be Permitted To Remain As Acceptable, Equal Citizens Within That Society.

Welcome To The Human Race. Nobody Controls His Own Life, Ender.

Human Beings Are Free Except When Humanity Needs Them. Maybe Humanity Needs You. To Do Something. Maybe Humanity Needs Me—to Find Out What You're Good For. We Might Both Do Despicable Things, Ender, But If Humankind Survives, Then We Were Good Tools.

Intellectual Understanding Does Not Always Bring Visceral Belief.

Sickness And Healing Are In Every Heart; Death And Deliverance In Every Hand.

Everybody Walks Past A Thousand Story Ideas Every Day. The Good Writers Are The Ones Who See Five Or Six Of Them. Most People Don't See Any.

Science Isn't Done By Consensus. It's Done By Rigorous Testing.

The Future Is A Hundred Thousand Threads, But The Past Is A Fabric That Can Never Be Rewoven.

Take Me Home, He Said Silently To Graff. In My Dream You Said You Loved Me. Take Me Home

Ender's Game Is Set More Than A Century In The Future And Has Nothing To Do With Political Issues That Did Not Exist When The Book Was Written In 1984... It Will Be Interesting To See Whether The Victorious Proponents Of Gay Marriage Will Show Tolerance Toward Those Who Disagreed With Them When The Issue Was Still In Dispute.

When You Really Know Someone, You Can't Hate Him.

A Rustic Setting Always Suggests Fantasy; To Suggest Science Fiction, You Need Sheet Metal And Plastic. You Need Rivets.

The Commercial Work Of Today Is The Classics Of Tomorrow.

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.

I Stole Their Future From Them; I Can Only Being To Repay By Seeing What I Can Learn From Their Past.

Two Sides Of The Same Coin, But Which Side Is Which?

Who Would I Be, If Other Good Souls Did Not Make Up For My Shortcomings?

The Great Forces Of History Were Real, After A Fashion. But When You Examined Them Closely, Those Great Forces Always Came Down To The Dreams And Hungers And Judgments Of Individuals.

As History Shows Us, When Colonization Is Voluntary, People Will Self-select Better Than Any Testing System. It’s Like Those Foolish Attempts To Control Immigration To American Based On The Traits That Were Deemed Desirable, When In Fact The Only Trait That Defines Americans Historically Is “descended From Somebody Willing To Give Up Everything To Live There.” Willingness Is The Single Most Important Test.

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.

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.

In Creating The Strange Milieu In Which Your Story Takes Place, You Must First Understand As Well As You Possibly Can The Familiar Milieu In Which Your Own Life Is Taking Place. Until You Have Examined And Comprehended The World Around You, You Can't Possibly Create A Complex And Believable Imaginary World.

The Only People Who Think Children Are Carefree Are The Ones Who've Forgotten Their Own Childhood.

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.

The Fear Of Death In The One Place Was Not As Strong As Another Kind Of Fear, The Fear Of A World Gone Crazy, A Place Where Anything Could Happen, Where Nothing Could Be Trusted, Where Nothing Was Certain. A Terrible Place.

Any Decent Person Who Knows What Warfare Is Can Never Go Into Battle With A Whole Heart.

Never Mind That The Story Had Turned Out To Be Lies And Foolishness—there Was Always Folks Stupid Enough To Say, Where There's Smoke There's Fire, When The Saying Should Have Been, Where There's Scandalous Lies There's Always Malicious Believers And Spreaders-around, Regardless Of Evidence.

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.

And What? What's The Other Choice? To Passively Let Things Happen And Then Say: "tut-tut, What At Botch That Was"? Don't We All Manipulate People? Even If We Openly Ask Them To Make A Choice, Don't We Try To Frame It So They'll Chose As We Think They Should?

The Dreamers Always Seem To Think Their Dream Is Worth The Price That Other People Will Pay. They Also Delude Themselves That They Will Control Whatever Evil They Use To Try To Bring About Their Dream.

If Pigs Could Vote, The Man With The Slop Bucket Would Be Elected Swineherd Every Time, No Matter How Much Slaughtering He Did On The Side.

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.

A Man Who Can't Read Only Knows What Other Folks Tell Him.

Science Fiction Is About What Could Be But Isn't; Fantasy Is About What Couldn't Be.

Science Fiction

We're Like The Wicked Witch. We Promise Gingerbread, Then Eat The Little Brats Alive.

The Ways Of Love Are Strange And Hard: The Love You Want Is Always Barred; The Love You Have You Want To Change. The Ways Of Love Are Hard And Strange.

We Were All Fated To Die, And So It Is Good That At Least We Can Be Sure Our Deaths Today Might Bring About A Good End, Might Make The World A Better Place.

Individual Human Beings Are All Tools, That The Others Use To Help Us All Survive.” “that’s A Lie.” “no. It’s Just A Half Truth. You Can Worry About The Other Half After We Win This War.

I Fell Into Playwriting Accidentally, Took Some Classes In It, And Also Took Creative Writing Classes, But I Really Didn't Expect It To Be A Career Because I Didn't Believe There Was A Way To Make Money As A Playwright Without Being Lucky And I Didn't Feel Particularly Lucky.

The Criminal Misuse Of Time Was Pointing Out The Mistakes. Catching Them―noticing Them―that Was Essential. 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. The Part Of The Man's Statement That Was True, However, Was About The Uselessness Of Speaking Up. If I Know That The Teacher Is Wrong, And Say Nothing, Then I Remain The Only One Who Knows, And That Gives Me An Advantage Over Those Who Believe The Teacher.

Quing-jao: I Am A Slave To The Gods, And I Rejoice In It. Jane: A Slave Who Rejoices Is A Slave Indeed.

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 Thing With Brothers Is, You're Supposed To Take Turns Being The Keeper. Sometimes You Get To Sit Down And Be The Brother Who Is Kept.

Let's Fly Away And Live Forever

It Is The Downfall Of Evil, That It Never Sees Far Enough Ahead.

It's The Teachers, They're The Enemy. They Get Us To Fight Each Other, To Hate Each Other.

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

Folks Always Seemed To Think That As Long As They Didn't Know About Something Bad, It Wasn't Happening, So Whoever Told Them Actually Caused It To Be True.

Whoop-de-do," Said Ram. "what?" "i'm Celebrating." "was That Irony Or Loss Of Mental Function?" Asked The Expendable. "was That A Rhetorical Questions, A Bit Of Humor, Or A Sign That You Are Losing Confidence In Me?" "i Have No Confidence In You, Ram," Said The Expendable. "well, Thanks." "you're Welcome.

You're A Monster. Thanks. Does This Mean I Get A Raise? No, Just A Medal. The Budget Isn't Inexhaustable.

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.

The Only Way To Retrieve A Secret,once Known, Is To Replace It With A Lie.

It Is Possible To Have Words Come To Your Mind, And Still Refrain From Speaking Them Aloud.

Apparently The Dutch Now Prided Themselves On Being Better At Queues Than The English, Which Was Absurd, Because Standing Cheerfully In Line Was The English National Sport.

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.

Thank God For You, Ender. Thank God.

Nature Can't Evolve A Species That Hasn't The Will To Survive. Individuals Might Be Bred To Sacrifice Themselves, But The Race As A Whole Can Never Cease To Exist.

Will To Survive

Doesn't It Make You Wonder About Your Own Sexual Identity, Not To Mention Your Sanity, That The Two Women You Love Are, Respectively, A Virtual Woman Existing Only In The Transient Ansible Connections Between Computers And A Woman Whose Soul Is In Fact That Of A Man Who Is The Husband Of Your Mother?

Dona Crista Laughed A Bit. "oh, Pip, I'd Be Glad For You To Try. But Do Believe Me, My Dear Friend, Touching Her Heart Is Like Bathing In Ice." I Imagine. I Imagine It Feels Like Bathing In Ice To The Person Touching Her. But How Does It Feel To Her? Cold As She Is, It Must Surely Burn Like Fire.

Someone's Sent A Loving Note In Lines Of Returning Geese And As The Moon Fills My Western Chamber As Petals Dance Over The Flowing Stream Again I Think Of You The Two Of Us Living A Sadness Apart A Hurt That Can't Be Removed Yet When My Gaze Comes Down My Heart Stays Up

It Was All Your Genes That Made Us Geniuses, Mom. Said Peter. We Sure Didn't Get Any From Dad. I Heard That. Father Said, Not Looking Up From The News That Was Being Displayed On The Table While He Ate It Would've Been Wasted If You Hadn't

Where Loyalty Bound Creatures Together, They Became Something Larger, Something New And Whole And Inexplicable.

Come In, Bean. Come In Julian Delphiki, Longed-for Child Of Good And Loving Parents. Come In, Kidnapped Child, Hostage Of Fate. Come And Talk To The Fates, Who Are Playing Such Clever Little Games With Your Life.

You Know How Writers Are... They Create Themselves As They Create Their Work. Or Perhaps They Create Their Work In Order To Create Themselves.

You're Cultural Supremacists To The Core. You'll Perform Your Questionable Activities To Help Out The Poor Little Piggies, But There Isn't A Chance In The World You'll Notice When They Have Something To Teach You.

The Univers Is Statistically More Likely To Be Ironic Than Not.

The Lies We Live Will Always Be Confessed In The Stories That We Tell.

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.

But Whether There's Some Grand Design Really Matters Little To Me. My Only Hope Was This: To See What Might Be, To Believe That It Should Be, And Then To Do All I Could To Bring It To Pass, Whatever The Cost.

Your Ego-depletion Seems Problematically Difficult To Assuage.

Love Is Random; Fear Is Inevitable.

Because If You Can’t Kill Then You Are Always Subject To Those Who Can, And Nothing And No One Will Ever Save You.

A Man Always Assumes That Others Are As Virtuous As Himself

I Think Santa Claus Is, By And Large, Quite Beneficial, For When The Child Is Finally Allowed -- Or Forced -- To Recognize The Nonexistence Of Santa Claus, Then The Child Is Able To Go Through The Vital Intellectual Process Of Reconstructing Reality In Light Of New Evidence, Complete With Back-forming New Stories To Account For Past Events. This Prepares The Child For Many Other Disillusionments And Gives Her Vital And Well-supported Experience In Maintaining Her Grip On Reality Independent Of The Stories Told To Her At Any Given Time.

I Love You Ender. More Than Ever. No Matter What You Decide.

Americans Love To Pick Up, Move On, Start Over. But Instead Of Being Somebody Fresh And New, They Become Somebody Lonely And Lost, Or, Far Too Often These Days, They Become Nobody At All, A Machine For Satisfying Hunger, Without Loyalty Or Honor Or Duty.

I Have Never Resisted The Lord In My Life, And I Never Will. But I'm Not So Hungry For Dialogue With Him That I Have To Make Up His Part As Well As My Own.

Before We Are Citizens, We Are Children, And It Is As Children That We Come To Understand Freedom And Authority, Liberty And Duty.

Humanity Does Not Ask To Be Happy.it Merely Asks Us To Be Brilliant On Its Behalf. Survival First, And Then Happiness As We Can Manage It... Take What Pleasure You Can In The Interstices Of Your Work, , But Your Work Is First, Learning First, Winning Is Everything Because Without It There Is Nothing.

In The Moment When I Truly Understand My Enemy, Understand Him Well Enough To Defeat Him, Then In That Very Moment I Also Love Him.

Let Me Be Loved Like That, By A Man Who Will Not Replace Me With Concubines When I'm Old And Ugly. Let Me Be Loved By A Man Who Loves God More Than Me.

I Know, You've Been Here A Year, You Think These People Are Normal. Well, They're Not. We're Not. I Look In The Library, I Call Up Books On My Desk. Old Ones, Because They Won't Let Us Have Anything New, But I've Got A Pretty Good Idea What Children Are, And We're Not Children. Children Can Lose Sometimes, And Nobody Cares. Children Aren't In Armies, They Aren't Commanders, They Don't Rule Over Forty Other Kids, It's More Than Anybody Can Take And Not Get Crazy.

Sometimes Good People Have To Do Terrible Things.

Madness, And Then Illumination.

Nobody Ever Wrote To Me Saying"you Know Ender's Game Was A Pretty Good Book, But You Know What It Really Needs A N Introduction!".....so Be Assured The Novel Stands On Its Own, And If You Skip This Intro And Go Straight To The Story, I Not Only Won't Stand In Your Way I'll Even Agree With You!

That's The Problem With Winning Right From The Start, Thought Ender. You Lose Friends.

Everybody Dies. What Matters Is What You Do Between Now And When It Happens To You.

Being Young Is An 18 Year Prison Sentence For A Crime Your Parents Committed. But You Do Get Time Off For Good Behavior.

It Is A Common Trait Of Primates To Become Submissive And Even Worshipful Toward One Who Has The Power To Kill Them.

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.

An Enemy, Ender Wiggin," Whispered The Old Man. "i Am Your Enemy, The First One You've Ever Had Who Was Smarter Than You. There Is No Teacher But The Enemy. No One But The Enemy Will Tell You What The Enemy Is Going To Do. No One But The Enemy Will Ever Teach You How To Destroy And Conquer. Only The Enemy Shows You Where You Are Weak. Only The Enemy Tells You Where He Is Strong. And The Rules Of The Game Are What You Can Do To Him And What You Can Stop Him From Doing To You. I Am Your Enemy From Now On. From Now On I Am Your Teacher.

You Spend Your Whole Life Grieving For Those Who Haven't Died Yet.

I Say This As A Democrat, For Whom The Republican Domination Of Government Threatens Many Values That I Hold To Be Important To America's Role As A Light Among Nations. But There Are No Values That Matter To Me That Will Not Be Gravely Endangered If We Lose This War.

There's A Reason Why Every Human Society Has Fiction. It Teaches Us How To Be 'good,' To Behave In A Way That Is For The Benefit Of The Whole Community.

That Is The Ultimate Power, To Stare Death In The Face And Be Unafraid.

There's Always Hope... Even When There Isn't Faith. And Sometimes, Without Hope Or Faith, There Must Be Charity.

If You Lay A Hand On Me I'll Ram Your Testicles So Far Up Inside Your Abdomen It'll Take A Heart Surgeon To Get Them Out.

Poke Gave Him Life. Ender Gave It Meaning.

Mom," Said Peter, "nobody Thinks You're A Lackwit, If That's What You're Worried About." Lackwit? In What Musty Drawer Of Some Dead English Professor's Dust-covered Desk Did You Find That Word? I Assure You That Never In My Worst Nightmares Did I Ever Suppose That I Was A Lackwit.

To Expect Wickedness From Human Beings Is The Best Way I Know Of To Avoid Surprises. And When I Am Surprised, It's Always Pleasantly.

My Father Always Said That Government Is Like Watching Another Man Piss In Your Boot. Someone Feels Better But It Certainly Isn't You.

Firequencher Raised His Hand. "i've Been Staying Out Of Family Conversations. Do I Get Credit For That?

It Has Been My Experience That The Better A Man You Are, The More Folks There Are Who Resent You For It, And Find Occasion To Get Angry At You No Matter How Kindly Meant Your Deeds May Be.

You Can't Write A Novel All At Once, Any More Than You Can Swallow A Whale In One Gulp. You Do Have To Break It Up Into Smaller Chunks. But Those Smaller Chunks Aren't Good Old Familiar Short Stories. Novels Aren't Built Out Of Short Stories. They Are Built Out Of Scenes.

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.

If Desire Did Not Dim The Brain, Nobody Would Ever Get Married, Drunk, Or Fat. ~val

I'm Crazy," Said Ender. "but I Think I'm Ok.

Working Is Hard And Distracts From Having Fun.

Oh No, Real Life Is Escape. The Great Terrors, The Horrors--we Hope--of Your Life Come From Reading Fiction.

The Most Important Training, Though, Is To Experience Life As A Writer, Questioning Everything, Inventing Multiple Explanations For Everything. If You Do That, All The Other Things Will Come; If You Don't, There's No Hope For You.

Perhaps I'm Hiding From Myself. Perhaps I Don't Want To Be What I'm Supposed To Be. Or Perhaps I Don't Want To Keep Living The Life I Already Started To Live.

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.

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