“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.”

“This tree, though, had not been fed on, so it was apparent that the culprit was a bull (elephant) who was filled with testosterone but no outlet for it, so he pushed over trees. It's a great releas...”

“And I got out of there without punching anyone, kicking anyone, or breaking down in tears. Some days the small victories are all you achieve.”

“If you're at the end of your rope . . . untie the knot in your heart.”

“A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.”

“As the new work fills my notebooks, I've come to realize that the characters in my stories were so real because I really did want to get close to people, I really did want to know them. It was just...”

“Loneliness clarifies. Here silence standsLike heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken, Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken, Luminously-peopled air ascends; And past the poppies bluish neutral...”

“You cannot give out one frequency, that of disrespect, and expect respect to flow toward you. Neither can you hold on to your biases, prejudices, and negative thinking toward something, and expect ...”

“You have had many successes, and you have earned the right to be respected.”

“Better to have the trust of the people than their respect. With trust, their respect could be earned later; without it, respect could never be deserved, and so to have it would be like poison.”