Page 565 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

"I didn't say I liked that future--"
"I didn't say you liked it either," said Valentine. "I said that's the future you choose to prepare for. But I don't. I choose to live in a universe that has some hope in it. I choose to live in a universe where your mother and sister will find a way to contain the descolada, a universe in which Starways Congress can be reformed or replaced, a universe in which there is neither the power nor the will to destroy an entire species."
"What if you're wrong?"
"Then I'll still have plenty of time to despair before I die. But you-- do you seek out every opportunity to despair? I can understand the impulse that might lead to that. Andrew tells me you were a handsome man-- you still are, you know-- and that losing the full use of your body has hurt you deeply. But other people have lost more than you have without getting such a black-hearted vision of the world."
"This is your analysis of me?" asked Miro. "We've known each other half an hour, and now you understand everything about me?"
"I know that this is the most depressing conversation I've ever had in my life."
"And so you assume that it's because I am crippled. Well, let me tell you something, Valentine Wiggin. I hope the same things you hope. I even hope that someday I'll get more of my body back again. If I didn't have hope I'd be dead. The things I told you just now aren't because I despair. I said all that because these things are possible. And because they're possible we have to think of them so they don't surprise us later. We have to think of them so that if the worst does come, we'll already know how to live in that universe."
Valentine seemed to be studying his face; he felt her gaze on him as an almost palpable thing, like a faint tickling under the skin, inside his brain. "Yes," she said.
"Yes what?"
"Yes, my husband and I will move over here and live on your ship." She got up from her seat and started toward the corridor leading back to the tube.
"Why did you decide that?"
"Because it's too crowded on our ship. And because you are definitely worth talking to. And not just to get material for the essays I have to write."
"Oh, so I passed your test?"
"Yes, you did," she said. "Did I pass yours?"