Orson Scott Card Quotes

609 Sourced Quotes

The older you get, the more you believe in God, whatever face he wears.

Orson Scott Card
Perhaps every writer who thoroughly creates a fictional world will inevitably create a mirror of his own time and yet also create a world that no one else but him has ever visited...

Orson Scott Card
Do you speak Scorn and Mockery to everyone? Or just to your betters?

Orson Scott Card
I wanted your songs.
You wanted my songs more than you wanted my happiness. So you took my happiness, and stole my songs.

Orson Scott Card
Life is full of grief, to exactly the degree we allow ourselves to love other people.

Orson Scott Card
Someday stars will wind down or blow up. Someday death will cover us all like the water of a lake and perhaps nothing will ever come to the surface to show that we were ever there. But we WERE there, and during the time we lived, we were alive. That's the truth - what is, what was, what will be - not what could be, what should have been, what never can be.

Orson Scott Card
It never occurred to you that they might be flattering you, because you don't lie.

Orson Scott Card
I be crazy too, little buddy, but at least when I be craziest, I be floating all alone in space and the crazy, she float out of me, she soak into the walls, and she don't come out till there be battles and little boys bump into the walls and squish out de crazy.

Orson Scott Card
Sometimes those who care for the whole community must act in a way that harms the individual. For a good man it never becomes easy and he avoids it when he can; but when people need him to be harsh, he will be harsh indeed, and he won't shrink from it, he'll do it with his own hand and let it be known what he does.

Orson Scott Card
I'm a terrible salesman, he finally said. I always tell the truth about what I'm selling, and then nobody buys it.

Orson Scott Card
Maybe she couldn't know who she was today. Maybe it was enough to know that she was no longer who she was before.

Orson Scott Card
Ender didn't like fighting. He didn't like Peter's kind, the strong against the weak, and he didn't like his own kind either, the smart against the stupid.

Orson Scott Card
Unemployment is capitalism's way of getting you to plant a garden.

Orson Scott Card
Evil people naturally assume that you will use that power exactly as they would use it.

Orson Scott Card
To expect wickedness from human beings is the best way I know of to avoid surprises. And when I am surprised, it's always pleasantly.

Orson Scott Card
He is dead, she thought bitterly, because we have forgotten him.

Orson Scott Card
First we try to preserve ourselves, until we see that we can't. Then we try to preserve our children, until we see we can't. Then we act to preserve our kin, and then our village or tribe, and when we see we can't preserve even them, then we act in order to preserve our memory. And if we can't do that, what is left?

Orson Scott Card
Are you all right, sir? asked Hezekiah.
Just fighting over old battles in my mind, said John. It's the problem with age. You have all these rusty arguments, and no quarrel to use them in. My brain is a museum, but alas, I'm the only visitor, and even I am not terribly interested in the displays.

Orson Scott Card
Maybe he's growing up.
Or maybe he just needed the right circumstances to discover the best in himself.

Orson Scott Card
He's young, she said.
We've all been guilty of that sin, said Alvin. And some never get over it.

Orson Scott Card
There are times when the world is rearranging itself, and at times like that, the right words can change the world.

Orson Scott Card
He would rather lose his power for doing right, than keep his power by doing wrong. Because he loves his people more than he loves his office.

Orson Scott Card
I'll have that someday, thought Peter. Someone who'll kiss me good-bye at the door. Or maybe just someone to put a blindfold over my head before they shoot me. Depending on how things turn out.

Orson Scott Card
At last he came to a door, with these words in glowing emeralds: THE END OF THE WORLD He did not hesitate. He opened the door and stepped through.

Orson Scott Card
Religion isn't always pretty. Especially viewed from the outside, by an unbeliever.

Orson Scott Card
Arthur had heard Peggy say that she didn't wish for more comfortable furniture, because if the chairs were softer, company would be inclined to stay longer.

Orson Scott Card
I want to be the kind of boy you are, thought Bean. But I don't want to go through what you've been through to get there.

Orson Scott Card
The barrier was only in my mind — which is true of this barrier as well. The more firmly I try to cross the barrier, the more firmly I'm rejected. Well, maybe it's the intention to cross the boundary that pushes me away.

Orson Scott Card
Someone's sent a loving note in lines of returning geese and as the moon fills my western chamber as petals dance over the flowing stream again I think of you the two of us living a sadness apart a hurt that can't be removed yet when my gaze comes down my heart stays up

Orson Scott Card
You understand that the piggies are animals, and you no more condemn them for murdering Libo and Pipo than you condemn a cabra for shewing up capim." That's right," said Miro. Ender smiled. "And that's why you'll never learn anything from them. Because you think of them as animals.

Orson Scott Card