Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to fill the roles given you by good people, by people who love you.
Orson Scott CardA weak King must be what other Kings have been; a strong King is himself, and from then on the meaning of the name of King is changed.
Orson Scott CardBefore we are citizens, we are children, and it is as children that we come to understand freedom and authority, liberty and duty.
Orson Scott CardAnd what? What's the other choice? To passively let things happen and then say: "Tut-tut, what at botch that was"? Don't we all manipulate people? Even if we openly ask them to make a choice, don't we try to frame it so they'll chose as we think they should?
Orson Scott CardI think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not "true" because we're hungry for another kind of truth: the mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all: our own self-story. Fiction, because it is not about someone who lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself. --From the Introduction
Orson Scott Card