Orson Scott Card Quotes

609 Sourced Quotes

Verily learned to live with constant deception, hiding what he was and what he saw and what he felt and what he did from everyone around him. It was only natural that he should be drawn to the study of law.

Orson Scott Card
Frozen, right? But to others, it looks like you're calm as could be. That's why some of the others tease you so mercilessly sometimes. They think you're made of stone, and they want to break in and touch the human feelings. They just don't know that when you seem most stony, that's when you're the most frightened and breakable.

Orson Scott Card
The only true vision comes not from God but from the inmost recesses of the human mind.

Orson Scott Card
They are beautiful monsters... And when they live in a network of peace and hope, when they trust the world and their deepest hungers are fulfilled, then within that system, that delicate web, there is joy. That is what we live for, to bind the monsters together, to murder their fear and give birth to their beauty.

Orson Scott Card
You'll find out I was never sand at all, but a seed, and out of death I'll make life. You can't break me. And whatever plan you have in mind, you can't make me.

Orson Scott Card
I had seen the princess and let her lie there unawakened, because the happily ever after was so damnably much work.

Orson Scott Card
I don't plan to die for any cause, said Jim Bowie. Nor any man, excepting only myself. I know that ain't noble, but it prolongs my days, which is philosophy enough for me.

Orson Scott Card
Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.

Orson Scott Card
Stop threatening me... I've lived in terror and I've come out of it. Kill me or not, torture me or not, it doesn't matter to me. Just decide what to do.

Orson Scott Card
It just gripes me hollow, the way God always sneaks in to take the credit.

Orson Scott Card
Alvin wondered if it was true—if all men had evil in their hearts, and those men as were good, maybe they were simply the ones who controlled theirselves so well they could act contrary to their heart's desire. But if that were so, then no man was good, not one.

Orson Scott Card
Around here, ma'am, if folks got they mouth open, if they ain't eating then they lying.

Orson Scott Card
We're all trying to decide whether your scores up there are a miracle or a mistake." "A habit.

Orson Scott Card
Love can't conquer anything. Love can't make a scholar into a warrior. Loving her can't make her love me.

Orson Scott Card
An eye for an eye? How Christian of you.' Unbelievers always want other people to act like Christians.

Orson Scott Card
Some men are great enough that they can love a whole woman, and not just part of her.

Orson Scott Card
To say what's in their hearts, regardless of shame. It doesn't change what they feel, what they want. It just helps... loosen them up.

Orson Scott Card
I don't care if I pass your test, I don't care if I follow your rules. If you can cheat, so can I. I won't let you beat me unfairly - I'll beat you unfairly first. - Ender

Orson Scott Card
More than likely, mother would simply go enigmatic on him, give him one of her inscrutable smiles, and tell him that if he didn't already understand, he never would.

Orson Scott Card
Like all children they only wanted to be known, and cared little about giving that gift to others.

Orson Scott Card
How could you disguise your own thoughts so even you didn't know what you were thinking?

Orson Scott Card
Quim," she said, "don't ever try to teach me about good and evil. I've been there, and you've seen nothing but a map.

Orson Scott Card
I always tell what I believe. Whether it's true, I'm no more sure than any man.

Orson Scott Card
I was ordained, said the preacher. No one ordains artists. They ordain themselves.
Just as Taleswapper had expected. The preacher retreated to authority as soon as he feared his ideas could not stand on their own merit. Reasonable argument was impossible when authority became the arbiter.

Orson Scott Card
He knew her too well to see her from the distance that pity requires. He loved her because he admired her. For bearing without complaint the burden the queen put on her. For still being gentle and loving when she had ample reason to be bitter.

Orson Scott Card
Verily wondered what the man could have the audacity to say, in the face of such evidence—what whining, sniveling complaint or protest he might utter.

Orson Scott Card
That's what survival means, for me. I thought it was a matter of staying alive, but it isn't. Nobody lives forever anyway. It's how you're remembered. It's what your children thought of you, what they think of you after you're dead. That's survival.

Orson Scott Card
[He] looked death in the eye and did not seem disappointed.

Orson Scott Card
Haven't you ever seen a 3-year-old when he makes a foolish blunder? He looks at whatever child or adult is nearby and screams at him "Look at what you made me do!" That's the moral universe that [they] always lived in.

Orson Scott Card
Peter, you're twelve years old. I'm ten. They have a word for people our age. They call us children and they treat us like mice.

Orson Scott Card