Page 843 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

They still move with perfect symmetry. They still point in the direction I'm looking. But people can't stand to look at them. So they look away. They don't read the expressions on my face. And therefore they think there are no expressions. My eyes still sting and redden and swell a little at times when I would have cried, if I still had tears."
"In other words," said Valentine, "you do care."
"I always cared," he said. "Sometimes I thought I was the only one who understood, even though half the time I didn't know what it was that I was understanding. I withdrew and watched, and because I didn't have any personal ego on the line in the family quarrels, I could see more clearly than any of them. I saw the lines of power-- Mother's absolute dominance even though Marcao beat her when he was angry or drunk. Miro, thinking it was Marcao he was rebelling against, when always it was Mother. Grego's meanness-- his way of handling fear. Quara, absolutely contrary by nature, doing whatever she thought the people who mattered to her didn't want her to do. Ela, the noble martyr-- what in the world would she be, if she couldn't suffer? Holy, righteous Quim, finding God as his father, on the premise that the best father is the invisible kind who never raises his voice."
"You saw all this as a child?"
"I'm good at seeing things. We passive, unbelonging observers always see better. Don't you think?"
Valentine laughed. "Yes, we do. The same role, then, you think? You and I, both historians?"
"Till your brother came. From the moment he walked in the door, it was obvious that he saw and understood everything, just the way I saw it. It was exhilarating. Because of course I had never actually believed my own conclusions about my family. I never trusted my own judgments. Obviously no one saw things the way I did, so I must be wrong. I even thought that I saw things so peculiarly because of my eyes. That if I had real eyes I would have seen things Miro's way. Or Mother's."
"So Andrew confirmed your judgments."
"More than that. He acted on them. He did something about them."
"Oh?"
"He was here as a speaker for the dead. But from the moment he walked in the door, he took-- he took--"
"Over?"
"Took responsibility. For change. He saw all the sicknesses I saw, but he started healing them as best he could. I saw how he was with Grego, firm but kind. With Quara, responding to what she