Fiction, because it is not about somebody who actually lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself.

He walked down the corridor, lined with his soldiers, who looked at him with love, with awe, with trust. Except Bean, who looked at him with anguish. Ender Wiggin was not larger than life, Bean knew. He was exactly life-sized, and so his larger-than-life burden was too much for him. And yet he was bearing it. So far.

I don't freeze up because it isn't my battle. I'm helping. I'm watching. But I'm free. Because it's Ender's game.

. . . All these readers have placed themselves inside this story, not as spectators, but as participants, and so have looked at the world, not with my eyes only, but also with their own.

Make friends. Be a leader. Kiss butts if you have to, but if the other guys despise you-you know what I mean?

Valentine had long ago observed that in a society that expected chastity and fidelity, like Lusitania, the adolescents who controlled and channeled their youthful passions were the ones who grew up to be both strong and civilized. Adolescents in such a community who were either too weak to control themselves or too contemptuous of society's norms to try usually ended up being either sheep or wolves- either mindless members of the herd or predators who took what they could and gave nothing.

The ways of love are strange and hard: The love you want is always barred; The love you have you want to change. The ways of love are hard and strange.