Orson Scott Card Quotes

609 Sourced Quotes

Even the good she found in him was really the goodness she had put in him, the goodness he had put on himself as a disguise in order to get her to marry him.

Orson Scott Card
Human beings may be miserable specimens, in the main, but we can learn, and, through learning, become decent people.

Orson Scott Card
I've got a pretty good idea what children are, and we're not children. Children can lose sometimes, and nobody cares.

Orson Scott Card
But the truth is that no person ever understands another, from beginning to end of life, there is no truth that can be known, only the story we imagine to be true, the story they really believe to be true about themselves; and all of them lies.

Orson Scott Card
Whenever the law gets its hands on you, those who use the law to their own advantage will also turn it against you. Don't put your trust in the laws of men, Alvin. They were designed by strong men to improve their power over weaker ones.

Orson Scott Card
The ways of love are strange and hard: the love you want is always barred; the love you have you want to change. The ways of love are hard and strange.

Orson Scott Card
I see Alvin with a son. That what he want most.
I see him with a woman, said Rien. That is what he miss the most.
I see him kneeling by a child's grave, said Dead Mary. That is what he fears the most.

Orson Scott Card
Please open your mind to the possibility that I might be an honest man who was himself deceived.

Orson Scott Card
She got out of the car in a smooth motion that [he] found attractive precisely because it did not seem designed to make men watch her do it.

Orson Scott Card
You think this because you are a nasty person by nature, Calvin, and you don't understand nice people. To you, the end of existence is to control things, and so you will never build anything, but rather will try to take control of what is already in existence. Your brother, though, is by nature a Maker, as you explain it; therefore he cares nothing about who rules, but only about what exists.

Orson Scott Card
What does it matter if, by following my heart, I also fulfill someone else's plan?

Orson Scott Card
I don't mind dying before you do. In fact, I rather prefer it that way.

Orson Scott Card
You accomplish exactly as much as the people who serve you decide you'll accomplish and nothing more.

Orson Scott Card
Good people can't out-think evil, 'cause evil think of things good folks can't think of. Can't enter your head what evil do.

Orson Scott Card
The thing with brothers is, you're supposed to take turns being the keeper. Sometimes you get to sit down and be the brother who is kept.

Orson Scott Card
Perhaps you don't desire poetry as much as you would like to have my torchy knowledge of your possible futures, but I dare say poetry will do you far more good. For knowing the future only makes you timid and complacent by turns, while poetry can shape you into the kind of souls who can face any future with boldness and wisdom and nobility, so that you need not know the future at all, so that any future will be an opportunity for greatness, if you have greatness in you.

Orson Scott Card
It was always from the love of strong women that he had found whatever joy had been granted him in his life.

Orson Scott Card
You looked so intense. Whatever you were saying, you seemed to mean it, and it wasn't amusing at all. Started quite a fashion. People keep looking for purpose now. Complicates everything.

Orson Scott Card
A character is what he does, yes - but even more, a character is what he means to do.

Orson Scott Card
He'd undone all he could. You can be sorry, and you can be forgiven, but you can't call back the futures that your bad decisions lost. He didn't need no philosopher to tell him that.

Orson Scott Card
I don't know a soul who doesn't maintain two separate lists of doctrines — the ones that they believe that they believe; and the ones that they actually try to live by.

Orson Scott Card
Don't lie to me! Don't seem so normal when I know you have cut yourself off from me in your heart! If you can put on our affectionate closeness like a mask, then I'll never be able to take joy in it again.

Orson Scott Card
Everybody thinks they want to see the truth, said Tenkswa-Tawa. That's one of the lies we tell ourselves.

Orson Scott Card
The danger that keeps me just a little frightened with every book I write, however, is that I'll overreach myself once too often and try to write a story that I'm just plain not talented or skilful enough to write. That's the dilemma every storyteller faces. It is painful to fail. But it is far sadder when a storyteller stops wanting to try.

Orson Scott Card
It's plain that if I married you for brains I was plumb cheated.

Orson Scott Card
I think you don't grow up until you stop worrying about other people's purposes or lack of them and find the purposes you believe in for yourself.

Orson Scott Card
We were all victims of an oppressive system, but that mattered far less to us than our deep bonding with our owners.

Orson Scott Card
Today, I saw a spark of decency. Let's blow on that spark and give it fuel.

Orson Scott Card
There's always hope... even when there isn't faith. And sometimes, without hope or faith, there must be charity.

Orson Scott Card
I don't know you, ma'am, and apparently I'm expected to die for you.

Orson Scott Card