We’re going to make him the best military commander in history. And then put the fate of the world on his shoulders.
If you can’t do it twice, you can’t do it at all.
Ender, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I know how it feels. I’m sorry, I’m your brother. I love you.
Madness, and then illumination.
Unemployment is capitalism’s way of getting you to plant a garden.
There are times when the world is rearranging itself, and at times like that, the right words can change the world.
Unfortunately, we live in a time when the media are almost a monoculture.
Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.
Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along – the same person that I am today.
The wise are not wise because they make no mistakes. They are wise because they correct their mistakes as soon as they recognize them.
America is an empire that does not wish to be one ; we are easily discouraged from doing what must be done to maintain the global order that allows democracy and prosperity to flourish.
Every day people judge all other people. The question is whether they judge wisely.
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.
Changing the world is good for those who want their names in books. But being happy, that is for those who write their names in the lives of others, and hold the hearts of others as the treasure most dear.
I doubt that America will come to Europe again. You’ll be on your own against militant Islam.
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.
She worked her toes into the sand, feeling the tiny delicious pain of the friction of tiny chips of silicon against the tender flesh between her toes. That’s life. It hurts, it’s dirty, and it feels very, very good.
When I write fiction, I create characters whose views are not my own, and I allow them to be eloquent in defense of their, not my, views.
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.
I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.