Page 1312 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

"On the contrary, I am old enough now to have all the memories of my people locked within my head. I remember things that happened long before I was born. I remember things that never happened at all. I live in memory."
"Is that a pleasant place to dwell?"
"Pleasant?" He shrugged. "I laugh at all of it because I must. Because it is so sweetly sad -- all the tragedies, and yet nothing is learned."
"Because human nature never changes," she said.
"I have imagined," he said, "how God might have done better, when he made man -- in his own image, I believe."
"Male and female created he them. Making his image anatomically vague, one must suppose."
He laughed and clapped her rather too forcefully on the back. "I didn't know you could laugh about such things! I am pleasantly surprised!"
"I'm glad I could bring cheer into your bleak existence."
"And then you sink the barb into the flesh." They reached an overlook that had rather less of a view of the sea than Anton's own terrace. "It is not a bleak existence, Carlotta. For I can celebrate God's great compromise in making human beings as we are."
"Compromise?"
"Our bodies could live forever, you know. We don't have to wear out. Our cells are all alive; they can maintain and repair themselves, or be replaced by fresh ones. There are even mechanisms to keep replenishing our bones. Menopause need not stop a woman from bearing children. Our brains need not decay, shedding memories or failing to absorb new ones. But God made us with death inside."
"You are beginning to sound serious about God."
"God made us with death inside, and also with intelligence. We have our seventy years or so -- perhaps ninety, with care -- in the mountains of Georgia, a hundred and thirty is not unheard of, though I personally believe they are all liars. They would claim to be immortal if they thought they could get away with it. We could live forever, if we were willing to be stupid the whole time."
"Surely you're not saying that God had to choose between long life and intelligence for human beings!"
"It's there in your own Bible, Carlotta. Two trees -- knowledge and life. You eat of the tree of knowledge, and you will surely die. You eat of the tree of life, and you remain a child in the garden forever, undying."