If human beings are all monsters, why should I sacrifice anything for them?" "Because they are beautiful monsters..., And when they live in a network of peace and hope, when they trust the world and their deepest hungers are fulfilled, then within that system, that delicate web, there is joy. That is what we live for, to bind the monsters together, to murder their fear and give birth to their beauty.

In war, everyone has their chance to bleed.

If he was a good man, how could he leave me? So he must not be a good man. But if he isn't good, then why does it hurt so much to lose him?

Ender nodded. It was a lie, of course, that it wouldn’t hurt a bit. But since adults always said it when it was going to hurt, he could count on that statement as an accurate prediction of the future. Sometimes lies were more dependable than the truth.

Maybe she couldn't know who she was today. Maybe it was enough to know that she was no longer who she was before.

He loved her, as you can only love someone who is an echo of yourself at your time of deepest sorrow.

The story itself, the true story, is the one that the audience members create in their minds, guided and shaped by my text, but then transformed, elucidated, expanded, edited, and clarified by their own experience, their own desires, their own hopes and fears.