Orson Scott Card Quotes

609 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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
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
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
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
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
There was no name for the disease; his body had gone insane, forgotten the blueprint by which human beings were built. Even now the disease still lives on in his children. Not in our bodies, but in our souls. We exist where normal human children are expected to be; we're even shaped the same. But each of us in our own way has been replaced by an imitation child, shaped out of a twisted, fetid, lipidous goiter that grew out of Father's soul.

Orson Scott Card
I merely observe that all living things are manipulated. As long as there is a will, it is bent and twisted constantly. Only the dead are allowed the luxury of freedom, and then only because they want nothing, and therefore can't be thwarted.

Orson Scott Card
When there aren't any smart decisions, I suppose you just have to pick the stupid decision you like best.

Orson Scott Card
Science fiction is about what could be but isn't; fantasy is about what couldn't be.

Orson Scott Card
All the universe is just a dream in God's mind, and as long as he's asleep, he believes in it, and things stay real.

Orson Scott Card
The only people who think children are carefree are the ones who've forgotten their own childhood.

Orson Scott Card
Come in, Bean. Come in Julian Delphiki, longed-for child of good and loving parents. Come in, kidnapped child, hostage of fate. Come and talk to the Fates, who are playing such clever little games with your life.

Orson Scott Card
In creating the strange milieu in which your story takes place, you must first understand as well as you possibly can the familiar milieu in which your own life is taking place. Until you have examined and comprehended the world around you, you can't possibly create a complex and believable imaginary world.

Orson Scott Card
At some point, every science fiction and fantasy story must challenge the reader's experience and learning. That's much of the reason why the genre is so open to experimentation and innovation that other genres reject--strangeness is our bread and butter. Spread it thick or slice it thin, it's still our staff of life.

Orson Scott Card
People love to hear the brag of the local boy, because they want him to be great, but the foreigner must deny that he has any outstanding virtue - this is what will endear him to the locals.

Orson Scott Card
It's simple. Nothing exists except in relation to something else.

Orson Scott Card
'I could kill you like this,' Peter whispered. 'Just press and press until you're dead'.

Orson Scott Card
And if you're going to criticize me for not finishing the whole thing and tying it up in a bow for you, why, do us both a favor and write your own damn book, only have the decency to call it a romance instead of a history, because history's got no bows on it, only frayed ends of ribbons and knots that can't be untied. It ain't a pretty package, but then it's not your birthday that I know of so I'm under no obligation to give you a gift.

Orson Scott Card
I'm never impossible. The most I ever allow myself is to be somewhat unlikely.

Orson Scott Card
A rustic setting always suggests fantasy; to suggest science fiction, you need sheet metal and plastic. You need rivets.

Orson Scott Card
Human beings do metamorphose. They change their identity constantly. However, each new identity thrives on the delusion that it was always in possession of the body it has just conquered.

Orson Scott Card
Apparently the Dutch now prided themselves on being better at queues than the English, which was absurd, because standing cheerfully in line was the English national sport.

Orson Scott Card
A weak King must be what other Kings have been; a strong King is himself, and from then on the meaning of the name of King is changed.

Orson Scott Card