“What people don't understand when you've already been a suicide and pulled through is that after the sadness comes fear: Where is my mind going with this? I don't want to die. I do not want to die. When you don't have so much control over your own thoughts, over the myriad voices in your head, you don't know where they could go.”

“You cannot know where your people are going if you don't know where your people have been.”

“What am I now, Alai?""Still good.""At what?""At--anything. There's a million soldiers who'd follow you to the end of the universe.""I don't want to go to the end of the universe.""So where do you want to go? They'll follow you."I want to go home, thought Ender, but I don't know where it is.”

“Monday, June 9: People think they know you. They think they know how you're handling a situation. But the truth is no one knows. No one knows what happens after you leave them, when you're lying in bed or sitting over your breakfast alone and all you want to do is cry or scream. They don't know what's going on inside your head--the mind-numbing cocktail of anger and sadness and guilt. This isn't their fault. They just don't know. And so they pretend and they say you're doing great when you're really not. And this makes everyone feel better. Everybody but you.”

“When men die, they die in fear", he said. "They take everything they need from you, and as a doctor it is your job to give it, to comfort them, to hold their hand. But children die how they have been living - in hope. They don't know what's happening, so they expect nothing, they don't ask you to hold their hand - but you end up needing them to hold yours. With children, you're on your own. Do you understand?”

“I don't know your customs, but here, if you don't want to frighten someone, you don't go looming over their sleeping body with knives.”