The boy whose arm he had broken was out for vengeance. His name, Ender quickly learned, was Bernard. He spoke his own name with a French accent, since the French, with their arrogant Separatism, insisted that the teaching of Standard not begin until the age of four, when the French language patterns were already set. His accent made him exotic and interesting; his broken arm made him a martyr; his sadism made him a natural focus for all those who loved pain in others.
An interesting side effect of the battle was that Ender emerged at the top of the soldier efficiency list. Since he hadn’t fired a shot, he had a perfect record on shooting – no misses at all. And since he had never been eliminated or disabled, his percentage there was excellent. No one else came close. It made a lot of boys laugh, and others were angry, but on the prized efficiency list, Ender was now the leader.
Learn from them, because I will always be there, one step ahead of you, programming more difficult and advanced patterns into the computer so that your next battle is more difficult, so that you are pushed.
Here are our failures, and here is our greatness; we did not mean to hurt you, and we forgive you for our death.
Maybe knowing about craziness means you don’t have to fall for it.
We do have a right to defend ourselves as best we can, and the only way we found that works is killing the buggers before they kill us.
We are like you; the thought pressed into his mind. We did not mean to murder, and when we understood, we never came again. 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. How were we to know? We could live with you in peace. Believe us, believe us, believe us.
Perhaps it’s impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be. She thought of that, worried about it for a few days, and then wrote a column using that as a premise, to show that politicians who toadied to the Russians in order to keep the peace would inevitably end up subservient to them in everything.
Children are a perpetual, self-renewing underclass, helpless to escape from the decisions of adults until they become adults themselves.
And anyway most people are idiots. They don’t care about the why. They only care about what threatens them.
The ambiguity of flesh made for a vastness of possibility that simply could not exist in a binary world.
That’s just one of the drawbacks when you love somebody so much greater than yourself, Miro told himself. I’ll never know the difference. She’ll come back and I’ll be happy with all the time we have together and I’ll never know how little time and effort she actually devotes to being with me. A diversion, that’s what I am. Then.
The secret is not to avoid learning useless knowledge. It’s to make use of whatever knowledge you have.
I know because I was also broken as a child and forced to become a wicked conniving selfish manipulating monster in order to protect the fragile love-hungry girl who would have been destroyed by the life I had to lead.
He thinks I’m like him, Mazer realized. That’s what we do as humans; it’s how we read minds. We assume that other people think like we do. So if we’re nasty and suspicious and conniving we assume that everyone is as nasty and suspicious and conniving as we are.
All he had to do was watch the game and understand how things worked, and then he could use the system, and even excel.
You are the least-alone person I have ever known. Your heart has always included within it everyone who let you love them, and many who did not.
Remember, boy. From now on the enemy is more clever than you. From now on the enemy is stronger than you. From.
If you can cheat, so can I. I won’t let you beat me unfairly – I’ll beat you unfairly first.
Evil isn’t best served by equally evil servants.