Ender's Shadow Quotes
"It's hard to know what to call it. A companion novel? A parallel novel? Perhaps a 'parallax,' if I can move that scientific term into literature."
"Ideally, this novel should work as well for readers who have never read Ender's Game as for those who have read it several times."
"For many years, I have gratefully watched as Ender's Game has grown in popularity, especially among school-age readers."
"The obvious reason is that Ender's Game is centered around a child, while the sequels are about adults."
"Recently, however, I have come to realize that the 3,000-year gap between Ender's Game and its sequels leaves plenty of room for other sequels that are more closely tied to the original."
"For the reader, the parallax is created by Ender and Bean, standing a little ways apart as they move through the same events."
"Your kids are so malnourished that they suffer serious mental degradation before you even begin testing them."
"They also represent possibility, as all children do."
"That's just the kind of sentimentality that discredits your whole project in the eyes of the I.F."
"The real danger was much more immediate – big kids."
"Stealing from younger children was much safer than stealing from shops or passersby."
"Any time Poke's crew found something to eat, they had to watch jealously and hide their winnings, for the bullies liked nothing better than to take away whatever scraps of food the little ones might have."
"Everyone knew that Rotterdam was, if not the capital, then the main seaport of Hell."
"You think I never thought of that, stupid?" she said. "Only once he's bought, how I keep him?"
"He no good to me dead," she said. "I want my own bully, he keep us safe, I don't want no dead one."
"I'm not worth a bean, remember?" said the boy.
"I'm four but I'm just little," he shouted back.
"Of the cruelest. Civilization is supposed to be the opposite of that."
"I know I do. I'm in. I'm the one you want. It makes sense."
"This little kid, he may not be part of your crew, but he's part of my family."
"It wasn't enough just to survive. It never had been."
"No matter how awful the danger following him might be, he could not hold still."
"The world was full of locked doors, and he had to get his hands on every key."
"You don't do good deeds for yourself, you do them because God is in you."
"Our only defense is early detection and a single massed force."
"All the potential Napoleons were here, wearing silly uniforms and battling each other for supremacy in a stupid game."
"We could live forever, if we were willing to be stupid the whole time."
"I'm speaking of no child at all. A hypothetical child."
"The human brain could be far smarter than it is. But is there a bargain?"
"We make our lives of service to the larger causes of humanity."
"From now on, you forget about gravity before you go through that door."
"Your feet are toward the enemy gate. Up is toward your own gate."
"Whatever your gravity is when you get to the door, remember – the enemy's gate is down."
"If the only way we can beat the Buggers is to replace ourselves with a new species, then have we really saved humanity?"
"Win or lose, the kid I pick is going to have a brutal time of it."
"When you are ordered to move, move fast, so if you get iced you'll bounce around instead of getting in the way of your own army's operations."
"Now that he knew what the feeling was, he could control it."
"Bean didn't really have anything left to prove."
"We're soldiers. 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."
"He'll have to get in line, Sister Carlotta. The I.F. court-martial takes precedence."
"I saw, I wrote, and the world changed a little."
"Sometime during their training, anytime at all, without the slightest warning, without ever even telling us they're doing it, they can switch over and we'll be commanding real ships in a real battle."
"They're keeping it a secret to protect us from our own compassion."
"Through their training, they had all learned that winning depended on being able to forget everything but what you were doing at that moment."
"Bean calmed his breathing. His heartrate slowed."
"No. I have to disbelieve it. I have to forget that it's true."
"But when your face is pointing straight at the display, your voice will be carried to whatever ship or squadron you have selected with your controls."
"For the moment, we will assign one of you at random to be that commander, just for practice."
"If you do not think that is a realistic military situation, you have not been reading history carefully enough."
"It was almost true. He did not have to keep checking to see where everyone was. It was all in his head at once."
"You're not human," said Petra. " Nobody can do what you do!"
"Would God I could die for thee, O Absalom, my son. My sons!"
"It happened just now," said Bean. "It happened at the home world of the Buggers. We just blew it up. They're all dead."
"We are, when the cause is sufficient, insane."
"We strap bombs on our bodies and blow ourselves up in the midst of our enemies."
"We have only the one world. We have only the one hope."
"I don't want to command anybody again," said Ender.
"Let us eat, and be merry: for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found."
"Welcome home, little brother," said Nikolai. "I told you they were nice."