What a waste of time to be posthumously famous.

I realized that everything important in sci-fi showed up in the magazines first. It's the proving ground for new writers and new ideas.

And yet.. even if you had been right, it would only have been by accident. A broken clock is right two times a day.

We need a Napoleon. An Alexander. Except that Napoleon lost in the end, and Alexander flamed out and died young. We need a Julius Caesar, except that he made himself a dictator, and died for it.

Peter, you're twelve years old. I'm ten. They have a word for people our age. They call us children and they treat us like mice.

a lot of human behavior was really acting out our responses to dangers long past.

The tribe is whatever we believe it is. If we say the tribe is all the Little Ones in the forest, and all the trees, then that is what the tribe is. Even though some of the oldest trees here came from warriors of two different tribes, fallen in battle. We become one tribe because we say we're one tribe." Ender marveled at his mind, this small raman [member of another sentient species]. How few humans were able to grasp this idea, or let it extend beyond the narrow confines of their tribe, their family, their nation.