I 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

If words can be lethal weapons, I must provide them with an arsenal.

I'm crazy," said Ender. "But I think I'm OK.

Your work is first, learning is first, winning is everything because without it there is nothing.

Early to bed and early to rise," Mazer intoned, "makes a man stupid and blind in the eyes.

You killed more people than anybody in history." "Be the best at whatever you do, that's what my mother always told me.

The most important training, though, is to experience life as a writer, questioning everything, inventing multiple explanations for everything. If you do that, all the other things will come; if you don't, there's no hope for you.