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 learned Stark...

As I recall, St. Paul stood by and held the coats of the men who were stoning him {Stephen}. Apparently he wasn't a believer at the time. In fact, I think he was regarded as the most terrible enemy of...

For the first time, Ender had found a living mind he could admire.

Compassion is what you're good at. I'm better at complex searches through organized data structures.

He woke up and fought another battle and won. Then he went to bed and slept again and dreamed again and then he woke up and won again and slept again and he hardly noticed when waking became sleeping....

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

When it comes down to it, though, the real decision is inevitable: If one of us has to be destroyed, let's make damn sure we're the ones alive at the end.

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.

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...

I want to be the kind of boy you are, thought Bean. But I don't want to go through what you've been through to get there.

Ender understood more than she said. Manipulation of gravity was one thing; deception by the officers was another; but the most important message was this: the adults are the enemy, not the other...

The only teacher that's worth anything to you is your enemy.

Poke gave him life. Ender gave it meaning.

I think you don't grow up until you stop worrying about other people's purposes or lack of them and find the purposes you believe in for yourself.

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.

No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one's life is nothing. Even the most evil of men and women, if you understand their hearts, had some generous act that redeems them,...