Page 1090 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

Novinha wept again, standing there in utter weariness. "I want it all to stop," she said. "I want to die."
"That's why he has to stay," said Valentine. "For his sake, can't you choose to live and let him go? Stay in Milagre and be the mother of your children and grandmother of your children's children, tell them stories of Os Venerados and of Pipo and Libo and of Ender Wiggin, who came to heal your family and stayed to be your husband for many, many years before he died. Not some speaking for the dead, not some funeral oration, not some public picking over the corpse like Plikt wants to do, but the stories that will keep him alive in the minds of the only family that he ever had. He'll die anyway, soon enough. Why not let him go with your love and blessing in his ears, instead of with your rage and grief tearing at him, trying to hold him here?"
"You spin a pretty story," said Novinha. "But in the end, you're asking me to give him to Jane."
"As you said," Valentine answered. "All the stories are fictions. What matters is which fiction you believe."
Chapter 9 -- "IT SMELLS LIKE LIFE TO ME"
"Why do you say that I am alone? My body is with me wherever I am, telling me endless stories of hunger and satisfaction, weariness and sleep, eating and drinking and breathing and life. With such company who could ever be alone? And even when my body wears away and leaves only some tiny spark I will not be alone for the gods will see my small light tracing the dance of woodgrain on the floor and they will know me, they will say my name and I will rise."
-- from The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao
Dying, dying, dead.
At the end of her life among the ansible links there was some mercy. Jane's panic at the losing of herself began to ebb, for though she still knew that she was losing and had lost much, she no longer had the capacity to remember what it was. When she lost her links to the ansibles that let her monitor the jewels in Peter's and Miro's ears she didn't even notice. And when at last she clung to the few last strands of ansibles that would not be shutting down, she could not think of anything, could not feel anything except the need to cling to these last strands even though they were too small to hold her, even though her hunger could never be satisfied with these.
I don't belong here.