This is what historians usually do, quibble about cause and effect when the point is, there are times when the world is in flux and the right voice in the right place can move the world. Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin, for instance. Bismark. Lenin.

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.

You know how writers are... they create themselves as they create their work. Or perhaps they create their work in order to create themselves.

The only process you've mastered is the process of elimination, and the only reason you've mastered that is because you can do it in the toilet.

Then you're dead, too, sweet little sister.' Oh, yes,' said Valentine. 'They'll believe that. "I didn't know it would kill Andrew. And when he was dead, I didn't know it will kill Valentine too.

I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration.

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.