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

by Orson Scott Card

I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not “true” because we’re hungry for another kind of truth:

Fiction, because it is not about somebody who actually lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about ourselves.

It made Ender listen more carefully to what people meant, instead of what they said. It made him wise.

Ender was almost surprised that Rabbit Army didn’t know already that they were hopelessly out of date.

Carn Carby left, and Ender mentally added him to his private list of people who also qualified as human beings.

Perhaps it’s impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.

“You must be good company for yourself.” “Not me. My memories.” “Maybe that’s who you are, what you remember.”

In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.

I don’t want to beat Peter.” “Then what do you want?” “I want him to love me.”

What matters is we built the ansible.

“So the whole war is because we can’t talk to each other.” “If the other fellow can’t tell you his story, you can never be sure he isn’t trying to kill you.”

Nature can’t evolve a species that hasn’t a will to survive. Individuals might be bred to sacrifice themselves, but the race as a whole can never decide to cease to exist.

Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf. Survival first, then happiness as we can manage it.

“Early to bed and early to rise,” Mazer intoned, “makes a man stupid and blind in the eyes.”

Bean remembered it, too, for his voice came over the headset, saying, “Remember, the enemy’s gate is down.”

We had to have a commander with so much empathy that he would think like the buggers, understand them and anticipate them. So much compassion that he could win the love of his underlings and work with them like a perfect machine, as perfect as the buggers.

Nobody ever asked me if I wanted to kill anybody.

“I’m crazy,” said Ender. “But I think I’m OK.”

“Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender.

I’m going because I know the buggers better than any other living soul, and maybe if I go there I can understand them better. I stole their future from them; I can only begin to repay by seeing what I can learn from their past.”

Come into our home, daughters of Earth; dwell in our tunnels, harvest our fields; what we cannot do, you are now our hands to do for us. Blossom, trees; ripen, fields; be warm for them, suns; be fertile for them, planets: they are our adopted daughters, and they have come home.

“We have to go. I’m almost happy here.”