Quotes Meme!

[weetuskenraider]

I've been wanting to do this one again for like weeeeeeeeeeks. And break week seems like a good time, and we haven't done it since October, so! Have a quotes meme.

Here's how this works: tag in (under the appropriate journal) with canon quotes from your characters. No context, just the quotes -- individually if you want, or several in one comment.

People can tag in to those threads and either guess the context/situation, or ask you what it's about, and this way we can all have a little amusement, dork about our canon a little, and maybe get in a little canon pimping on the side.

As always, don't forget to keep checking in and see what new stuff's gone up!

Comments

[endsthegame]

Aaand from Ender's Game, the classic:

Stolen from my info:
---

"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, Ender thought, I just don't know where it is.

"I wasn't, Alai. Holding anything back."
"I know. Neither was I."
"Salaam, Alai."
"Alas, it is not to be."
"What isn't?"
"Peace. It's what salaam means. Peace be unto you."
---

"The power to cause pain is the only power that matters, the power to kill and destroy, because if you can't kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one will ever save you."

"I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it."

"Mazer, I don't want to keep dreaming these things. I'm afraid of sleep. I keep thinking of things that I don't want to remember. My whole life keeps playing out as if I were a recorder and someone else wanted to watch the most terrible parts of my life."

"It was just him and me. He fought with honor. If it weren't for his honor, he and the others would have beaten me together. They might have killed me, then. His sense of honor saved my life. I didn't fight with honor... I fought to win. "

[endsthegame]

"You forget that I know you, Ender," said Valentine. "You have decided to die. You've decided to provoke this boy into killing you."
"Why would you think that?"
"Look at the names you chose for passwords, Ender! You can't live with the guilt."
"Not guilt, Val," said Ender. "Responsibility."
"Don't make this boy kill you," said Valentine.
"I won't make anybody do anything. How about that?"
"I should have stayed home and watched Peter conquer the world."
"Oh, no, Valentine. We're on a much more interesting trajectory through space-time."
"I'm not going to sleep through my life like you are, Ender. I have work to do. I'm going to write my histories. I'm not burdened with a death wish."
"If I wished to be dead," said Ender, "I would have let Bonzo Madrid and his friends beat my brains out in a bathroom in Battle School."
"I know you," said Valentine.
"I know you think you do," said Ender. "And if I die, you'll think I chose to. The truth is much more complicated. I don't intend to die. But I'm not afraid of the risk of death. Sometimes a soldier has to put himself in harm's way in order to achieve victory."
"It's not your war," said Valentine.
Ender laughed. "It's always my war."

---

"Balance! How can anybody know the relative weight of sins and great achievements? Five chickens do not make a cow."

---

"Do you want to know what the other knot is?" asked Valentine.
"I assume it's Peter bringing the whole world together after the war was over," said Ender.
"What does that have to do with a history of the Formic Wars?" she said. "The last knot is you."
"I'm a Gordian knot. Don't unravel, just slice."
"I'm going to write about you."
"I won't read it."
"Fine," said Valentine. "I won't show it to you."

---

"Act like yourself," said Ender. "You can't be happy if you're pretending all the time."
"Mother is."
"Which? Pretending? Or happy?"
"Pretending to be happy."
"So maybe you can grow up to be happy without having to pretend."
"Maybe," she said. And then she was gone.
Ender closed the door and sat down. He wanted to scream in frustration at thwarted desire, in rage at a mother who would send her daughter on such an errand, at Admiral Morgan for making all this necessary, at himself for being such a liar. "You can't be happy if you're pretending all the time." Well, his life certainly didn't contradict that statement. He was pretending all the time, and he certainly was not happy.

---

"All right," said Valentine. "If you're happy with it, I'm happy with it." Whereupon she did that momentary bug-eyed thing she did to let him know she was lying.
"I'm done with responsibility, Val," said Ender. "I had quite enough in Battle School and on Eros. I intend to spend the voyage making friends and reading everything I can get my hands on."
"And at the end, you can write an essay called 'How I Spent My Summer Vacation.' "
"It's always summer when your heart is full of joy," said Ender.
"You are so full of crap," said Valentine.

---

... I was just looking for that last quote and got sidetracked SHUT UP.