I'll have that someday, thought Peter. Someone who'll kiss me good-bye at the door. Or maybe just someone to put a blindfold over my head before they shoot me. Depending on how things turn out.

So I want to ask you a hypothetical question. My favorite kind. Next to rhetorical ones. I can nap equally well through either kind.

The story is one that you and I will construct together in your memory. If the story means anything to you at all, then when you remember it afterward, think of it, not as something I created, but rather as something that we made together.

Human beings are free except when humanity needs them. Maybe humanity needs you. To do something. Maybe humanity needs me—to find out what you're good for. We might both do despicable things, Ender, but if humankind survives, then we were good tools.

A duel is just two murders who agree to take turns trying to kill each other.

There's only one thing that will make them stop hating you. And that's being so good at what you do that they can't ignore you

The essence of training is to allow error without consequence.