Quotes from book

Speaker for the Dead

“When you really know somebody you can’t hate them. Or maybe it’s just that you can’t really know them until you stop hating them.”

“Sickness and healing are in every heart; death and deliverance in every hand.”

“Maybe she couldn't know who she was today. Maybe it was enough to know that she was no longer who she was before.”

“As long as you keep getting born, it's all right to die sometimes”

“He is dangerous, he is beautiful, I could drown in his understanding.”

“Quim," she said, "don't ever try to teach me about good and evil. I've been there, and you've seen nothing but a map.”

“Order and disorder', said the speaker, 'they each have their beauty.”

“No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one's life is nothing. Even the most evil of men and women, if you understand their hearts, had some generous act that redeems them, at least a little, from their sins.”

“Every person is defined by the communities she belongs to.”

“He loved her, as you can only love someone who is an echo of yourself at your time of deepest sorrow.”

“It's the most charming thing about humans. You are all so sure that the lesser animals are bleeding with envy because they didn't have the good fortune to be born Homo sapiens.”

“The difference between raman and varelse is not in the creature judged, but in the creature judging. When we declare an alien species to be raman, it does not mean that they have passed a threshold of moral maturity. It means that we have.”

“I don't hate you, I love you, you're part of myself, you're my heart and when you go it's my heart torn out and carried away”

“We've devoted our lives to learning about them!" Miro said.

Ender stopped. "Not from them.”

“You killed more people than anybody in history."

"Be the best at whatever you do, that's what my mother always told me.”

“Twisted and perverse are the ways of the human mind," Jane intoned. "Pinocchio was such a dolt to try to become a real boy. He was much better off with a wooden head.”

“This is how humans are: We question all our beliefs, except for the ones that we really believe in, and those we never think to question.”