Speaker for the Dead (Ender Quintet Book 2)

by Orson Scott Card

How clever of me. I have found such a pathway into hell that I can never get back out.

For he loved her, as you can only love someone who is an echo of yourself at your time of deepest sorrow.

“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, at least a little, from their sins.”

There was trauma, loss, change; she was not now the same being that she had been before. Parts of her had died.

She discovered, as many a living being had discovered, that rational decisions are far more easily made than carried out.

Telling the story of who she was, and then realizing that she was no longer the same person. That she had made a mistake, and the mistake had changed her, and now she would not make the mistake again because she had become someone else, someone less afraid, someone more compassionate.

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

When you really know somebody, you can’t hate them.” “Or maybe it’s just that you can’t really know them until you stop hating them.”

But when it comes to human beings, the only type of cause that matters is final cause, the purpose. What a person had in mind. Once you understand what people really want, you can’t hate them anymore. You can fear them, but you can’t hate them, because you can always find the same desires in your own heart.”