Bean Quotes

“I need you to be clever, Bean. I need you to think of solutions to problems we haven't seen yet. I want you to try things that no one has ever tried because they're absolutely stupid.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game

“And then he thought: Is this how idiots rationalize their stupidity to themselves?”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow

“One mind can think only of its own questions; it rarely surprises itself.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow

“I'm not stupid!" In Bean's experience, that was a sentence never uttered except to prove its own inaccuracy.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow

“Death is not a tragedy to the one who dies; to have wasted the life before that death, that is the tragedy.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon

“The criminal misuse of time was pointing out the mistakes. Catching them―noticing them―that was essential. If you did not in your own mind distinguish between useful and erroneous information, then you were not learning at all, you were merely replacing ignorance with false belief, which was no improvement. The part of the man's statement that was true, however, was about the uselessness of speaking up. If I know that the teacher is wrong, and say nothing, then I remain the only one who knows, and that gives me an advantage over those who believe the teacher.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow

“Poke gave him life. Ender gave it meaning.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow

“The Buggers have finally, finally learned that we humans value each and every individual human life... But they've learned this lesson just in time for it to be hopelessly wrong—for we humans do, when the cause is sufficient, spend our own lives. We throw ourselves onto the grenade to save our buddies in the foxhole. We rise out of the trenches and charge the entrenched enemy and die like maggots under a blowtorch. We strap bombs on our bodies and blow ourselves up in the midst of our enemies. We are, when the cause is sufficient, insane.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow

“O my son Absalom,' Bean said softly, knowing for the first time the kind of anguish that could tear such words from a man’s mouth. 'my son, my son Absalom. Would God I could die for thee, O Absalom, my son. My sons!”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow

“He would always speak the language of the heart with an awkward foreign accent.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon

“Bean could see the hunger in their eyes. Not the regular hunger, for food, but the real hunger, the deep hunger, for family, for love, for belonging.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow

“I want to be the kind of boy you are, thought Bean. But I don’t want to go through what you’ve been through to get there.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow

“I don't freeze up because it isn't my battle. I'm helping. I'm watching. But I'm free. Because it's Ender's game.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow

“...the thing with brothers is, you're supposed to take turns being the keeper. Sometimes you get to sit down and be the brother who is kept.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow

“I would carry some of it if I could, Bean said silently. Like I did today, you can turn it over to me and I’ll do it, if I can. You don’t have to do this alone.

Only even as he thought this, Bean knew it wasn’t true. If it could be done, Ender was the one who would have to do it. All those months when Bean refused to see Ender, hid from him, it was because he couldn’t bear to face the fact that Ender was what Bean only wished to be — the kind of person on whom you could put all your hopes, who could carry all your fears, and he would not let you down, would not betray you.

I want to be the kind of boy you are, thought Bean. But I don’t want to go through what you’ve been through to get there.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow

“Thanks from keeping me from being a liar," said Nikolai.
"What?"
"About your having diarrhea."
"For you I'd get dysentery."
"Now that's friendship.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow

“Once you get a brother, you don’t give him up easy.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow

“Mom," said Peter, "nobody thinks you're a lackwit, if that's what you're worried about."

Lackwit? In what musty drawer of some dead English professor's dust-covered desk did you find that word? I assure you that never in my worst nightmares did I ever suppose that I was a lackwit.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow Puppets

“He walked down the corridor, lined with his soldiers, who looked at him with love, with awe, with trust. Except Bean, who looked at him with anguish. Ender Wiggin was not larger than life, Bean knew. He was exactly life-sized, and so his larger-than-life burden was too much for him. And yet he was bearing it. So far.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow

“He didn't feel that way about anybody. You just live in the place you're in, you don't worry about where you used to be or where you wish you were, here is where you are and here's where you've got to find a way to survive and lying in bed boo-hooing doesn't help much with that.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow

“Aw, Poke, you poor, kind, decent, stupid girl. You saved me and I let you down.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow

“What I want," he said softly, "is to stand in this meadow and walk in the light of the sun.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadows in Flight

“You don't have to eat the entire turd to know that it's not a crab cake.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon

“Because here's the thing―we don't give a shit about fairness here. We're soldiers. Soldiers do not give the other guy a sporting chance. Soldiers shoot in the back, lay traps and ambushes, lie to the enemy and outnumber the other bastard every chance they get. Your kind of murder only works among civilians. And you were too cocky, too stupid, too insane to realize it.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow

“Because these fools always look up for power. People above you, they never want to share power with you. Why you look to them? They give you nothing. People below you, you give them hope, you give them respect, they give you power, cause they don't think they have any, so they don't mind giving it up.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow

“Bean sighed inwardly. It never failed. Whenever he had any conversation with Ender, it turned into an argument.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game

“Don't launch it," said Bean into his microphone, head down. "Set it off inside your ship. God be with you.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow

“How much time? Not as much as I had yesterday.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Giant

“Why do I feel a song coming on?" said Bean. The sarcastic words slipped out of him unbidden.”
― Orson Scott Card

“Don't be one of the scurrying, struggling ants.
Be the shoe.”
― Orson Scott Card