“Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf.”

“We have to go. I'm almost happy here.”

“I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it.”

“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 right, always right; th...”

“The power to cause pain is the only power that matters, the power to kill and destroy, because if you can't kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one will ever save ...”

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

“In a universe where all life is in movement, where ever fact seen in perspective is totally engaging, we impose stillness on lively young bodies, distort reality to dullness, make action drudgery. ...”

“If only she could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it for laughter. ”

“When you're a kid all you know is that your dad puts on his suit or overalls and vanishes from your life until nightfall. Sometimes my pops came back exhausted and scarlet-eyed, as if he'd been eng...”

“And it means snapshots, because that's what all stories I write come down to; each is a snapshot of who I was during however many days and weeks it was written. A fictional reflection of my mind fo...”

“There's a lot of sex. But it isn't about sex.”

“We are good at stories. We hoard them, like an old woman in a room full of boxes, but now and then we pull out our best, and spread them out. We talk of the bad years when the cotton didn't open, a...”

“I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration.”