If you could make them feel as you can make me feel, then perhaps they could forgive you.
All these uses a valid; all these reading of the book are “correct”. For all these readers have placed themselves inside this story, not as spectators, but as participants, and so have looked at the world of Ender’s Game, not with my eyes only, but also with their own.
Alai suddenly kissed Ender on the cheek and whispered in his ear, “Salaam.” Then, red-faced, he turned away and walked to his own bed at the back of the barracks. Ender guessed that the kiss and the word were somehow forbidden. A suppressed religion, perhaps. Or maybe the word had some private and powerful meaning for Alai alone.
I find out what I really want by seeing what I do,” said Ender. “That’s what we all do, if we’re honest about it. We have our feelings, we make our decisions, but in the end we look back on our lives and see how sometimes we ignored our feelings, while most of our decisions were actually rationalizations because we had already decided in our secret hearts before we ever recognized it consciously.
I’m just saying things never get so bad we can’t do something to make them better.
The problem was, the people who should shut up were the ones talking the most.
If he did not speak his tale, it grew dank and musty, it shrank inside him, while with the telling the tale stayed fresh and virtuous.
As the proverb said, “Think in the morning, Act in the noon, Eat in the evening, Sleep in the night.” Too late for thinking now. Too early for eating.
Love and serve the sources of your strength.
Then he was done. He pulled away, rolled onto his back. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re welcome,” she said. She believed in answering what people meant, not what they said.
This was done to you by men and women whose only desire was to enslave you; they have succeeded so well that you are proud of your slavery.
There is no teacher but the enemy. No one but the enemy will tell you what the enemy is going to do. No one but the enemy will ever teach you how to destroy and conquer. Only the enemy show you where you are weak. Only the enemy shows you where he is strong. And the rules of the game are what you can do to him and what you can stop him from doing to you. – Mazer Rackham.
One of Ender’s toonmates shook his head. “You dumb as a thumb.
I need to find out if I’m as good at peace as I am at war.
People are never fair, even when they try to be... and few are the ones who try.
Who was more cursed, the one who died, unknowing until the very moment of his death, or the one who watched his destruction as it approached, step by step, for days and weeks and years?
That’s the way of the world: The princess can disappear, but the witch is forever.
Famous at high school is like being employee of the month at the sanitation department.
Everybody thinks Hitler got to power because of his armies, because they were willing to kill, and that’s partly true, because in the real world power is always built on the threat of death and dishonor. But mostly he got to power on words, on the right words at the right time.
Maybe it isn’t based on what you deserve. Maybe it’s based on what you need.