“Things seem to be returning to normal, he thought, but couldn’t stop himself from laughing out loud when he realized he was crawling through a secret passage dirt tunnel toward a drainage pipe where an army of rats awaited to accompany him home. Normal indeed.”

“Normal! He thought. Normal! I don't want things to be normal. Normal is always being left out, never belonging.”

“Even though he was afraid to admit it, when he was with her it seemed it was worth doing all those normal things that normal people do.”

“Everything we do means something, Ender realized. Them laughing. Me not laughing. He toyed with the idea of trying to be like the other boys. But he couldn’t think of any jokes, and none of theirs seemed funny. Wherever their laughter came from, Ender couldn’t find such a place in himself.”

“This is what he was good at, he realized. This is what he did. He placed himself in the world, and the world drew his thoughts outside himself, where they multiplied and spiraled and led him in silent, thrilling flights. And as he expanded into the world, he expanded inside. At these moments an endlessness beyond thought opened inside him. Outside, his mind was whizzing through things, but inside, he was silent, still; sometimes, he knew he was not even breathing.”

“But, as I watch this film, I often think that the boy did not know what he was really running toward, that it was not the end zone which awaited him. Somewhere in that ten second dash the running boy turned to metaphor and the older man could see it where the boy couldn not. He would be good at running, always good at it, and he would always run away from the things that hurt him, from the people who loved him, and from the friends empowered to save him. But where do we run when there are no crowds, no lights, no end zones? Where does a man run? the coach said, studying the films of himself as a boy. Where can a man run when he has lost the excuse of games? Where can a man run or where can he hide when he looks behind him and sees that he is only pursued by himself?”