Orson Scott Card Quotes

609 Sourced Quotes

Even the devil gives some justice to his victims, when they're beyond all help.

Orson Scott Card
Maybe she just wanted to be the one to decide when things happened between them. Then again, what women didn't want to decide that?

Orson Scott Card
Everyone dies. Everyone leaves. What matters is the things you build together before they go. What matters is the part of them that continues in you when they're gone.

Orson Scott Card
Why give you answers you won't believe?
Well, answers I don't believe would be a step forward.

Orson Scott Card
To face death, that's nothing much. But to feel really stupid when you die, well, that would be insufferable.

Orson Scott Card
The problem with elections is that anybody who wants an office badly enough to run for it probably shouldn't have it. And anybody who does not want an office badly enough to run for it probably shouldn't have it, either. Government office should be received like a child's Christmas present, with surprise and delight. Instead it is usually received like a diploma, an anticlimax that never seems worth the struggle to earn it.

Orson Scott Card
So let me tell you what I think about gods. I think a real god is not going to be so scared or angry that he tries to keep other people down…A real god doesn't care about control. A real god already has control of everything that needs controlling. Real gods would want to teach you how to be just like them.

Orson Scott Card
Money only buys the illusion of power. Real power is in the force of will — will strong enough that others bend to it for its own sake, and follow it willingly. Power that is won through deception will evaporate under the hot light of truth.

Orson Scott Card
I was the last to know what was happening to me. Or at least I was the last to know that I knew.

Orson Scott Card
At night in his own bed, Alvin listened to the distant greensong, still warm and beautiful, still bright and hopeful even though the forest was getting so sparse, even though the future was so dim. Cause there's no fear of future in the song of life, just the ever-joyful present moment. That's all I want right now, thought Alvin. The present moment, which is good enough.

Orson Scott Card
She thinks she's kept me. She would have kept me better if she had let me go now.

Orson Scott Card
You, said Purity, have been long enough out of England to pick up some American brag.
But surrounded by Americans as I am, said Cooper, my brag is like a farthing in a sack of guineas.

Orson Scott Card
I'm putting you in Dink Meeker's toon. From now on, as far as you're concerned, Dink Meeker is God." "Then who are you?" "The personnel officer who hired God.

Orson Scott Card
Thank you for this, Peter. For dry eyes and silent weeping. You taught me how to hide anything i felt. More than ever, i need that now.

Orson Scott Card
They won't be required to sacrifice anything in order to belong to your assembly. A religion that is all sweetness, but no light; all form, but no substance; all tradition, but no precept.

Orson Scott Card
I never had you, not since you escaped from the womb.

Orson Scott Card
The story is one that you and I will construct together in your memory. If the story means anything to you at all, then when you remember it afterward, think of it, not as something I created, but rather as something that we made together.

Orson Scott Card
You want to beat Peter?" she asked "No," he answered "Beat the buggers. Then come home and see who notices Peter Wiggen anymore. Look him in the eye when all the world loves and reveres you. That'll be defeat in his eyes, Ender, thats how you win" "You don't understand" he said "Yes i do" "No you don't. I don't want to beat Peter" "Then what do you want?" "I want him to love me

Orson Scott Card
Very bad thing, killing little boy. But maybe Red man knows about whisky-Red, very thirsty, making crazy. Not like killing man to take his house or his woman or his land, like White man all the time.

Orson Scott Card
How does he do it? How does he master people without bluster or bullying? How does he make people fear him or love him, not in spite of his ruthlessness but because of it?

Orson Scott Card
You spend your whole life grieving for those who haven't died yet.

Orson Scott Card
And yet.. even if you had been right, it would only have been by accident. A broken clock is right two times a day.

Orson Scott Card
Humans invent an imaginary lover and put that mask over the face of the body in their bed. That is the tragedy of language my friend. Those who know each other only through symbolic representations are forced to imagine each other. And because their imagination is imperfect, they are often wrong.

Orson Scott Card
In the absence of understanding, that was a good a reason as any for living together and making babies and raising them up and throwing them out of the house and then going through the long slow decline together until one of them died and left the other alone again, understanding as little as ever about what their spouses really wanted, who they really were. Was that tragedy? Or was that comedy? Was there really any difference?

Orson Scott Card
It's called civilization. Women invented it, and every time you men blow it all to bits, we just invent it again.

Orson Scott Card
I don't hate you, I love you, you're part of myself, you're my heart and when you go it's my heart torn out and carried away—

Orson Scott Card
Folks always seemed to think that as long as they didn't know about something bad, it wasn't happening, so whoever told them actually caused it to be true.

Orson Scott Card
I learned to separate the story from the writing, probably the most important thing that any storyteller has to learn-that there are a thousand right ways to tell a story, and ten million wrong ones, and you're a lot more likely to find one of the latter than the former your first time through the tale.

Orson Scott Card
Was it worth it? To lose part of who he had been in order to live free? Perhaps this new self was better than the old.

Orson Scott Card
She don't set no store to see a king. Her pa a king back in Africa, and they shoot him dead. Them Portuguese slavers show her what it mean to be a king—it mean you die quick like everybody, and spill blood red like everybody, and cry out loud in pain and scared—oh, fine to be a king, and fine to see one. Do them White folk believe this lie?

Orson Scott Card