Page 1481 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

"My father said it. Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive."
"Exactly. Untangle this for me."
"You're the one who's weaving a web for me, Bean. You know things you don't tell the rest of us. You think I don't see that? So you want me to restore your trust in me, but you don't tell me anything useful."
"I opened my soul to you," said Bean.
"You told me about your *feelings*." She said it with utter contempt. "So good, it's a relief to know you have them, or at least to know that you think it's worth pretending to have them, nobody's quite sure about that. But what you don't ever tell us is what the hell is actually going on here. We think you know."
"All I have are guesses."
"The teachers told you things back in Battle School that none of the rest of us knew. You knew the name of every kid in the school, you knew things about us, all of us. You knew things you had no business knowing."
Bean was stunned to realize that his special access had been so noticeable to her. Had he been careless? Or was she even more observant than he had thought? "I broke into the student data," said Bean.
"And they didn't catch you?"
"I think they did. Right from the start. Certainly they knew about it later." And he told her about choosing the roster for Dragon Army.
She flopped down on her bunk and addressed the ceiling. "You chose them! All those rejects and those little launchy bastards, *you* chose them!"
"Somebody had to. The teachers weren't competent to do it."
"So Ender had the best. He didn't *make* them the best, they already *were* the best."
"The best that weren't already in armies. I'm the only one who was a launchy when Dragon was formed who's with this team now. You and Shen and Alai and Dink and Carn, you weren't in Dragon, and you're obviously among the best. Dragon won because they were good, yes, but also because Ender knew what to do with them."
"It still turns one little corner of my universe upside down." "Petra, this was a trade."