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.

Parents always make their worst mistakes with their oldest children. That's when parents know the least and care the most, so they're more likely to be wrong and also more likely to insist that they're right.

What a laugh, though. To think that one human being could ever really know another. You could get used to each other, get so habituated that you could speak their words right along with them, but you never know why other people said what they said or did what they did, because they never even know themselves. Nobody understands anybody.

Aw, Poke, you poor, kind, decent, stupid girl. You saved me and I let you down.

Before we are citizens, we are children, and it is as children that we come to understand freedom and authority, liberty and duty.

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.

She will look at you as women look at men, and she will judge you as a woman judge men, not on the strength of their arguments, and not in their cleverness or prowess in battle, but rather on the force of their character, the intensity of their passion, their strength of soul, their compassion, and... ah, this above all... their conversation.