I taught you everything you know. But I didn't teach you everything I know.

Let me be loved like that, by a man who will not replace me with concubines when I'm old and ugly. Let me be loved by a man who loves God more than me.

Ender stepped under the water and rinsed himself, took the sweat of combat and let it run down the drain. All gone, except they recycled it and we'll be drinking Bonzo's blood water in the morning. All the life gone out of it, but his blood just the same, his blood and my sweat, washed down in their stupidity or cruelty or whatever it was that made them let it happen.

He could see Bonzo's anger growing hot. Hot anger was bad. Ender's anger was cold, and he could use it. Bonzo's was hot, and so it used him.

When I write fiction, I create characters whose views are not my own, and I allow them to be eloquent in defense of their, not my, views.

What am I now, Alai?" "Still good." "At what?" "At--anything. There's a million soldiers who'd follow you to the end of the universe." "I don't want to go to the end of the universe." "So where do you want to go? They'll follow you." I want to go home, thought Ender, but I don't know where it is.

At first he thought he felt bad because he was afraid of leading an army, but it wasn't true. He knew he'd make a good commander. He felt himself wanting to cry. He hadn't cried since the first few days of homesickness after he got here. He tried to put a name on the feeling that put a lump in his throat and made him sob silently, however much he tried to hold it down. He bit down on his hand to stop the feeling, to replace it with pain. It didn't help.