Speaker for the Dead (Ender Quintet Book 2)

by Orson Scott Card

You don’t know what it was like to write the Hive Queen and the Hegemon. How much agony it was for him to—to imagine himself inside an alien mind—and come out of it filled with love for the great creature we destroyed. He lived at the same time as the worst human being who ever lived, Ender the Xenocide, who destroyed the buggers—and he did his best to undo what Ender did,

We know who killed us, and it wasn’t you.> It was me. <You were a tool.> It was me. <We forgive you.>

they oriented themselves to him, walking in parabolas around him, as if he were the center of gravity in the room and everything else was moved by the force of his presence.

Maybe she couldn’t know who she was today. Maybe it was enough to know that she was no longer who she was before.

They’re afraid that someday they’ll come to a world and find that you have got there first.” “We don’t want to be there first,” said Human. “We want to be there too.”

“At least the gossips will get nothing from this—there aren’t any secrets left to tell.”