Here's the secret that every successful software company is based on: You can domesticate programmers the way beekeepers tame bees. You can't exactly communicate with them, but you can get them to swarm in one place and when they're not looking, you can carry off the honey.

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

Your work is first, learning is first, winning is everything because without it there is nothing.

He’d undone all he could. You can be sorry, and you can be forgiven, but you can’t call back the futures that your bad decisions lost

Your dream is a good one. [. . .] The desire that is the very root of life itself: To grow until all the space you can see is part of you, under your control. It's the desire for greatness.

Satanic Verses is a despicable book that could not have been written by a person who wished to behave decently and responsibly.

Of course, I also hear from critics who detest what I do, and while sometimes I feel rather proud of having made various the loathsome people or groups angry, at other times I wonder why I put up with such grief.