In the moment when I truly understand my enemy understand him well enough to defeat him then in that very moment I also love him. I think its impossible to really understand somebody what they want what they believe and not love them the way they love themselves. And then in that very moment when I love them.... I destroy them.

He splashed into the water his whole body not with the reverent attitude of prayer but with a desperate thirst he buried his head under the water and drank deep with his cheek against the cold stone of the riverbed the water tumbling over his back his calves. He drank and drank lifted his head and shoulders above the water to gasp in the evening air and then collapsed into the water again to drink as greedily as before.It was a kind of prayer though he realized as he emerged freezing cold as the water evaporated from his skin in the breeze of the dark morning.I am with you he said to the Oversoul. Ill do whatever you ask because I long for you to accomplish your purpose here.

Earthborn animals do this thing inside their brainsa sort of firing-off of synapses controlled insanity. While theyre asleep. The part of their brain that records sight or sound its firing off every hour or two while they sleep even when all the sights and sounds are complete random nonsense their brains just keep on trying to assemble it into something sensible. They try to make stories out of it. Its complete random nonsense with no possible correlation to the real world and yet they turn it into these crazy stories. And then they forget them. All that work coming up with these stories and when they wake up they forget almost all of them. But when they do remember then they try to make stories about those crazy stories trying to fit them into their real lives. They change what their stories mean. They transform things so that the same memory can mean a thousand different things. Even from their dreams sometimes they make up out of that randomness something that illuminates everything. Even if the vast majority of them are wrong even if ninety-nine of every hundred is stupid and wrong out of those thousands of ideas that still leaves them with a hundred good ones. Thats how they make up for being so stupid and having such short lives and small memories.

In my dreams said Ender Im never sure whether Im really me.

All dreams. If there was love or pity for him it was only in his dreams.

Nights were so real that days began to seem dreamlike to him