Ender in Exile (Ender's Saga, #5)

by Orson Scott Card

My needs are simple and few, thought Valentine. Food. Clothing. A comfortable place to sleep. And no idiots.

“Maybe I’ve been trying to study the wrong alien species,” he said softly.

You are not his mother or father. We are the ones with the right to meddle and do what’s good for him whether he likes it or not. You are his sister. Think of yourself as companion, friend, confidante. Your responsibility is to receive what he gives, and to give him what he asks only if you think it’s good. You do not have either the right or the responsibility to give him what he specifically asks you not to give. That would be no gift; that is neither friend nor sister.

It is a mother who can provide the ineffable comfort to a wounded soul. It is a father who can say, “Ego te absolvo” and “well done, thou good and faithful servant” and be believed by the inmost soul.

There are so many powerful people in this world who refuse to see any vision they didn’t think of.”

Don’t we all manipulate people? Even if we openly ask them to make a choice, don’t we try to frame it so they’ll choose as we think they should?

Don’t I have a right to count myself in the balance here, my own happiness, my own future? And

Sometimes can’t I switch off my brain and be the hairless chimp with an eye for an available female? No.

It seems to me that all my regrets are balanced by something I’m glad of. On average, then, I have no regrets at all. But I’m also not a bit happy. Perfect balance. On average, I don’t feel anything at all. I think I don’t exist.”

You shouldn’t be proud of being good at something, if you were born with it. That would be as dumb as being proud of having two legs, or speaking a language, or pooping.

There is no harder job than parenting. There is no human relationship with such potential for great achievement and awful destructiveness, and despite all the experts who write about it, no one has the slightest idea whether any decision will be right or best or even not-horrible for any particular child. It is a job that simply cannot be done right.

From my mother, I need to know that I still belong, that I am part of you, that I do not stand alone.

From my father, I need to know that I, as a separate being, have earned my place in this world.

From my mother, I need to know that she has watched my life and “kept all these sayings in her heart.”

From my father, I need to hear these words: “Well done, thou good and faithful servant…. Enter into the joy of the Lord.”

If you spend your whole life pretending to be good, then you are indistinguishable from a good person. Relentless hypocrisy eventually becomes the truth.

It’s not my fault that you lived. If you had been killed you would not have to deal with all these wounds. This is the portion of life that was given back to you; it was the enemy who took from you the wholeness that you do not have. My job was to make it so that your death or injuries meant something, and I have done that.

I wish I had let the future take care of itself, and instead of skipping forward through time, had stopped, made a family, and died in my proper time, surrounded by children.

I never treated you like a son when I had you in my power, but I have loved you like a son; and in this letter I have spoken to you as I’d like to think I might have spoken to the sons I never had. I say to you: Well done, Ender. Now be happy.

Pacifism only works with an enemy that can’t bear to do murder against the innocent. How many times are you lucky enough to get an enemy like that?”