That's the problem with winning right from the start, thought Ender. you lose friends.

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

You're like, both like, Alexander the Great.' We can't both be Alexander.' Well sometimes I think you're two side of the same coin, and I'm the metal in between.

Human beings may be miserable specimens, in the main, but we can learn, and, through learning, become decent people.

Mazer, i don't want to keep dreaming these things. I'm afraid to sleep. I keep thinking of things i don't want to remember. My whole life keeps playing out as if i were a recorder and someone else wanted to watch the most terrible parts of my life

But whether there's some grand design really matters little to me. My only hope was this: to see what might be, to believe that it should be, and then to do all I could to bring it to pass, whatever the cost.

As he thought of it, though, he could not imagine what “just living” might actually be. He had never done it in his life. But he wanted to do it anyway.