Orson Scott Card - Ender's Game (1985)

21 Sourced Quotes

View all Orson Scott Card Quotes
Fiction, because it is not about somebody who actually lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself.

Orson Scott Card
.. All these readers have placed themselves inside this story, not as spectators, but as participants, and so have looked at the world, not with my eyes only, but also with their own.

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
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
Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along―the same person that I am today.

Orson Scott Card
I don't know a soul who doesn't maintain two separate lists of doctrines — the ones that they believe that they believe; and the ones that they actually try to live by.

Orson Scott Card
What does it matter if, by following my heart, I also fulfill someone else's plan?

Orson Scott Card
Human beings may be miserable specimens, in the main, but we can learn, and, through learning, become decent people.

Orson Scott Card
My hands are clean, but not because I wasn't prepared to bloody them.

Orson Scott Card
Even in cultures where marriages are arranged by parents, you're never actually forbidden to fall in love with your mate.

Orson Scott Card
"'Waterloo was won,'" quoted Rackham, "'on the playing fields of Eton.'"
"What the hell does that mean?" asked Carn Carby. "You never even went to Eton."
"It was an analogy," said Rackham. "If you hadn't spent your entire childhood playing war games, you'd actually know something. You're all so uneducated."

Orson Scott Card
The story itself, the true story, is the one that the audience members create in their minds, guided and shaped by my text, but then transformed, elucidated, expanded, edited, and clarified by their own experience, their own desires, their own hopes and fears.

Orson Scott Card
Such fools they were in Battle School, to let so few girls in. It left the boys completely helpless against a woman when they returned to Earth.

Orson Scott Card
That is the earth, he thought. Not a globe thousands of kilometers around, but a forest with a shining lake, a house hidden at the crest of a hill, high in the trees, a grassy slope leading upwards from the water, fish leaping and birds strafing to take the bugs that lived at the border between water and sky. Earth was the constant noise of crickets, and winds, and birds

Orson Scott Card
Only stupid men trying to seem smart need to be with dumb women. Only weak men trying to look strong are attracted to compliant women.

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
She knew that her feelings toward Bean were completely different. No such dreams and fantasies. Just a sense of complete acceptance. She belonged with Bean, not the way that a wife belonged with a husband or, God forbid, a girlfriend with a boyfriend, but rather way the left hand belonged to the right. They simply fit. Nothing exciting about it, nothing to write home about. But it could be counted on.

Orson Scott Card
I don't care how loyal you think you're going to be, Dink. It's not in you. You're a brat and you always will be. So admit what a lousy follower you are, and go ahead and LEAD.

Orson Scott Card
I've seen Australia and I've lived on an asteroid and I'd take the asteroid.

Orson Scott Card
"And you actually were cuddly," said Carn. "No offense, but you were spunky."
"If that's your word for 'bratty little asshole,' said Dink mildly.

Orson Scott Card
The essence of training is to allow error without consequence.

Orson Scott Card