Orson Scott Card - Time Quotes

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The world is always a democracy in times of flux, and the man with the best voice will win.

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
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
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 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
Miro, I'm so sorry. I always felt such pity for you humans because you could only think of one thing at a time and your memories were so imperfect and... now I realize that just getting through the day without killing somebody can be an achievement." It gets to be a habit. Most of us manage to keep our body count quite low. It's the neighborly way to live.

Orson Scott Card
Wasting our time? This is a waste of time, to live in peace and plenty with my wife and children? May I waste the rest of my life, then.

Orson Scott Card
Deep inside himself, in a place he didn't often go, where he kept the things he didn't like to think about but dared not forget, he knew that [she] was still alive somewhere, and somehow she was watching what he did, or at least looking in on him from time to time.

Orson Scott Card
We're both damaged property, I guess.
Plenty of time for renovation.

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
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
His vices were the vices of his time and culture, but his virtues transcended the milieu of his life.

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
As he had so many times before, Taleswapper addressed a few silent words to God, which always came down to this question: Why do you put us to so much trouble, when it all comes to naught in the end?... And, as usual, God had nothing much to say to Taleswapper when his questioning was done.

Orson Scott Card
For the first time I understood the haunting beauty of the song. It was the song of a killer who longed to die. It was the song of justice yearned for but not yet done.

Orson Scott Card
By the time Verily was sixteen, a sturdy and rather good-looking young man of some education and impeccable manners, he had become a thoroughgoing skeptic. If the dogmas about witchery could be so hopelessly wrong, how could any of the teachings of the ministers be relied upon? It left Verily Cooper at loose ends, intellectually speaking, for all his teachers spoke as if religion were the cornerstone of all other learning, and yet all of Verily's actual studies led him to the conclusion that sciences founded upon religion were uncertain at best, utterly bogus at worst.

Orson Scott Card
I've known some bad people and some good people in my life, and it's the bad ones who live in fear, all the time. Cause they know their own hearts... And they think everyone else is just waiting to pull the same moves on them that they've got planned to pull on somebody else.

Orson Scott Card
If I have to choose between an omnipotent God who leaves the world in this condition, and a God who has only a little bit of power but really cares and tries to make things better, I'll take you every time. Go on playing God, Hyrum. You're not bad at it. Sometimes you kind of get it right.

Orson Scott Card
He loved her, as you can only love someone who is an echo of yourself at your time of deepest sorrow.

Orson Scott Card
I will love you forever, he thought. I am lying, he thought, and this time he was right.

Orson Scott Card
I have to win this now, and for all time, or I'll fight it every day and it will get worse and worse.

Orson Scott Card
This is what historians usually do, quibble about cause and effect when the point is, there are times when the world is in flux and the right voice in the right place can move the world. Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin, for instance. Bismark. Lenin.

Orson Scott Card
I think that a good person can sometimes do wrong out of ignorance or weakness or wrong thinking, but when hard times come, the goodness wins out after all. And a bad person can often seem good and trustworthy for a long time, but when hard times come, the evil in him gets revealed.

Orson Scott Card
Here's my throat. I carry no weapon. You could have killed me at any time, even when I knew you were my enemy. Why did you need to deceive me into trusting you first? Were you afraid that death wouldn't bother me enough, unless I felt betrayed?

Orson Scott Card
The lives of all people flow through time, and, regardless of how brutal one moment may be, how filled with grief or pain or fear, time flows through all lives equally.

Orson Scott Card
You want to make me the best soldier possible. Go down and look at the standings. Look at the all-time standings. So far you're doing an excellent job with me. Congratulations. Now when are you going to put me up against a good army?

Orson Scott Card
O my son Absalom,' Bean said softly, knowing for the first time the kind of anguish that could tear such words from a man's mouth. 'my son, my son Absalom. Would God I could die for thee, O Absalom, my son. My sons!

Orson Scott Card
I'm neutral on lying, seeing as how there's times when the truth just hurts people.

Orson Scott Card
If you asked me to marry you all over again today I'd say yes, said Valentine. And if I had only met you for the first time today, I'd ask.

Orson Scott Card
To reach out to you when I'm in need, and to try to be here for you when you need me back. And to feel such tenderness when I look at you that I want to stand between you and all the world: and yet also to lift you up and carry you above the strong currents of life; and at the same time, I would be glad to stand always like this, at a distance, watching you, the beauty of you.

Orson Scott Card