Ender's Game (Ender's Saga, #1)

by Orson Scott Card

But Ender would be kind to squirrels. Do you understand? He’d feed them.” “But if he fed them, they’d become tame, and that much easier for Peter to catch.” Valentine began to cry again. “No matter what you do, it always helps Peter. Everything helps Peter, everything, you just can’t get away, no matter what.”

“Cubit! Has God been telling you to build a boat or something? Or are you in an archaic mood?”

These annoyances were petty, though, and Ender persuaded himself to accept them as another form of praise.

Human beings didn’t evolve brains in order to lie around on lakes. Killing’s the first thing we learned. And a good thing we did, or we’d be dead, and the tigers would own the earth.”

“So the whole war is because we can’t talk to each other.”

Nature can’t evolve a species that hasn’t a will to survive.

There is no teacher but the enemy. No one but the enemy will tell you what the enemy is going to do.

Only the enemy shows you where you are weak. Only the enemy tells you where he is strong.

We had to have a commander with so much empathy that he would think like the buggers, understand them and anticipate them.

Any decent person who knows what warfare is can never go into battle with a whole heart.

And we can take with us what their worlds have never known—cities full of people who live private, individual lives, who love and hate each other for their own reasons. In all the bugger worlds, there was never more than a single story to be told; when we’re there, the world will be full of stories, and we’ll improvise their endings day by day.

“Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to fill the roles given you by good people, by people who love you.

but never did we dream that thought could arise from the lonely animals who cannot dream each other’s dreams.