We're like the wicked witch. We promise gingerbread, then eat the little brats alive.

And enough for me that when my hand touched your shoulder, you leaned on me; and when you felt me slip away, you called my name.

My favourite all-time work of fiction: Lord of the Rings. My favourite all-time nonfiction book: Guns, Germs, and Steel. Ask me again next week, you'll get a different answer.

If you read to your kids you'll make readers out of them, partly because they'll associate reading with good parent time.

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.

Humanity does not ask to be happy.It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf. Survival first, and then happiness as we can manage it... Take what pleasure you can in the interstices of your work, , but your work is first, learning first, winning is everything because without it there is nothing.

This is the Speaker for the Dead? Judging someone by appearances?" "Maybe I've fallen in love with Grego." "You've always been a sucker for people who pee on you.