"Your folks are like God because you want to know they're out there and you want them to approve of your life, still you only call them when you're in crisis and need something."

"It seems to me that almost everything is a waste of time."

"Time is a gift."

"Why not? That's a good reason for almost anything - a bit used perhaps, but still quite serviceable."

"Expect everything, I always say, and the unexpected never happens."

"Well, since you got here by not thinking, it seems reasonable to expect that, in order to get out, you must start thinking."

"There are no wrong roads to anywhere. Except the that leads you to a car crash."

"Whether or not you find your own way, you're bound to find some way. If you happen to find my way, please return it, as it was lost years ago. I imagine by now the toy is quite rusty."

"Oh, this won't take a minute," the man assured them. "I'm the official Senses Taker, and I must have some information before I can take your senses. Now, if you'll just tell me when you were born, where you were born, why you were born, how old you are now, how old you were then, how old you'll be in a little while, your mother's name, your father's name, your aunt's name, your uncle's name, your cousin's name, where you live, how long you've lived there, the schools you've attended, the schools you haven't attended, your hobbies, your telephone number, your shoe size, shirt size, collar size, hat size, and the names and addresses of six people who can verify all this information, we'll get started. One at a time, please; stand in line; and no pushing, no talking, no peeking."

"I can hardly see a thing," said Milo, taking hold of Tock's tail as a sticky mist engulfed the moon. "Perhaps we should wait until morning." "They'll be mourning for you soon enough," came a reply from directly above, and this was followed by a hideous cackling laugh very much like someone choking on a fishbone. "I don't think you understand," said Milo timidly as the watchdog growled a warning. "We're looking for a place to spend the night." "It's not yours to spend," the bird shrieked again, and followed it with the same horrible laugh. "That doesn't make any sense, you see--" he started to explain. "Dollars or cents, it's still not yours to spend," the bird replied haughtily. "But I didn't mean--" insisted Milo. "Of course you're mean," interrupted the bird, closing the eye that had been open and opening the one that had been closed. "Anyone who'd spend a night that doesn't belong to him is very mean." "Well, I thought that by--" he tried again desperately. "That's a different story," interjected the bird a bit more amiably. "If you want to buy, I'm sure I can arrange to sell, but with what you're doing you'll probably end up in a cell anyway." "That doesn't seem right," said Milo helplessly, for, with the bird taking everything the wrong way, he hardly knew what he was saying. "Agreed," said the bird, with a sharp click of his beak, "but neither is it left, although if I were you I would have left a long time ago." "Let me try once more," he said in an effort to explain. "In other words--" "You mean you have other words?" cried the bird happily. "Well, by all means, use them. You're certainly not doing very well with the ones you have now."

"You must never feel badly about making mistakes, as long as you learn from them."

"So many things are possible just as long as you don't know they're impossible."

"What you can do is often simply a matter of what you will do."

"But it's not just learning that's important. It's learning what to do with what you learn and learning why you learn at all that matters."

"Whatever we learn has a purpose and whatever we do affects everything and everyone else."

"You know that it's there, but you just don't know where - but just because you can never reach it doesn't mean that it's not worth looking for."

"Many of the things which can never be, often are."

"If you want sense, you'll have to make it yourself."

"There is much worth noticing that often escapes the eye."

"The way you see things depends a great deal on where you look at them from."

"Fools always look up for power. People above you, they never want to share power with you. Why you look to them? They give you nothing. People below you, you give them hope, you give them respect, they give you power, cause they don't think they have any, so they don't mind giving it up."

"...for we humans do, when the cause is sufficient, spend our own lives. We throw ourselves onto the grenade to save our buddies in the foxhole. We rise out of the trenches and charge the entrenched enemy and die like maggots under a blowtorch. We strap bombs on our bodies and blow ourselves up in the midst of our enemies. We are, when the cause is sufficient, insane."

"If I had a plan, I'd take control. I have no plan. So for good or ill, it's Ender's game not mine."

"Suddenly a vast eruption licked outward toward the last of the human fighters, Petra' s ships, on which there might or might not still be men alive to see death coming at them. To see their victory approach."

"“O my son Absalom,” Bean said softly, knowing for the first time the kind of anguish that could tear such words from a man’s mouth. “my son, my son Absalom. Would God I could die for thee, O Absalom, my son. My sons!”"

"If someone runs after your car, screaming and waving his arms, you know that something significant is intended, even if you can't hear a word he's saying."

"He hadn't realized how much he needed the honor of others until he finally got it."

"Soldiers don't like to lose. And that is why losing is a much more powerful teacher than winning."

"Soldiers do not give the other guy a sporting chance. Soldiers shoot in the back, lay traps and ambushes, lie to the enemy and outnumber the other bastard every chance they get. Your kind of murder only works among civilians."

"The more Sister Carlotta explained it, the less he understood it. Because if there was somebody in charge, then he ought to be fair, and if he wasn't fair, then why should Sister Carlotta be so happy that he was in charge?"

"I just... I'm saying that God must have been watching over you." "Yeah. Well, sure. So why didn't he watch over all those dead kids?" "He took them to his heart and loved them." "So then he didn't love me?" "No, he loved you too, he — " "Cause if he was watching so careful, he could have given me something to eat now and then."

"Male and female he created them. Making his image anatomically vague, one must suppose."

"Will I die from her mistakes too? No, I'll die from my own damn mistakes!"

"Analyzing things was fine, but good reflexes could save your life."

""I’m not stupid!" In [his] experience, that was a sentence never uttered except to prove its own inaccuracy."

"Know, think, choose, do."

"Trying to shock nuns is not much sport. There is no trophy."

"Christians have been expecting the imminent end of the world for millennia." "But it keeps not ending." "So far, so good."

"Isn't that what it means to be civilized? That you can wait to get what you want?"

"Once they understood our autonomy, the seed of their defeat was sown."

"Humans will always act to preserve their own lives — except for the times when they don’t."

"Most victories came from instantly exploiting your enemy's stupid mistakes, and not from any particular brilliance in your own plan."

"Sometimes the other side is irresistibly strong, and then the only sensible course of action is to retreat in order to save your force to fight another day."

"Sometimes you have to tell people the truth and ask them to do the thing you want, instead of trying to trick them into it."

"Doesn’t it occur to you that the very fact that you’re asking me this question tells me there’s something else for me to figure out, and therefore greatly increases the chance that I will figure it out?"

"You can’t rule out the impossible, because you never know which of your assumptions about what was possible might turn out, in the real universe, to be false."

"Please stop reassuring me of how respectful you are whenever you’re about to tell me that I’m an idiot."