Orson Scott Card Quotes

When you walk on the face of a world, then forgiveness comes.. Orson Scott Card

When you walk on the face of a world, then forgiveness comes.

In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him,

In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them.... I destroy them.

I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not

I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.

Perhaps a physicist would know at once why this whole idea was absurd. But then, perhaps

Perhaps a physicist would know at once why this whole idea was absurd. But then, perhaps a physicist would be so locked into the consensus of his scientific community that it would be harder for him to accept an idea that transformed the meaning of everything he knew. Even if it were true.

You know how writers are... they create themselves as they create their work. Or perhaps they

You know how writers are... they create themselves as they create their work. Or perhaps they create their work in order to create themselves.

When you have a good romance, find ways to make their lives miserable and hellish...Do you

When you have a good romance, find ways to make their lives miserable and hellish...Do you think 'Titanic' would have been so popular if they had both lived? Not a prayer.

As often I have been a science fiction writer writing science fiction for the community of

As often I have been a science fiction writer writing science fiction for the community of science fiction readers, I am also, for good or ill, an American writing American literature to an American audience. Most fundamentally, though, I am a human being writing human literature to a human audience.

The classes were valuable, but the real education was the game.. Orson Scott Card

The classes were valuable, but the real education was the game.

He was cold and tired, but he ignored the cold. Around him stars shone. Some bright,

He was cold and tired, but he ignored the cold. Around him stars shone. Some bright, some dim, the most constant things in life. Segundo smiled up at them, happy at least to be dying among friends.

There are times when the world is rearranging itself, and at times like that, the right

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

The commercial work of today is the classics of tomorrow.. Orson Scott Card

The commercial work of today is the classics of tomorrow.

Among my most prized possessions are words that I have never spoken.. Orson Scott Card

Among my most prized possessions are words that I have never spoken.

The boys have to have a chance to be at peace, at rest, without someone listening,

The boys have to have a chance to be at peace, at rest, without someone listening, to favor or despise them depending on the way they talk act and think.

You're a monster. Thanks. Does this mean I get a raise? No, just a medal. The

You're a monster.
Thanks. Does this mean I get a raise?
No, just a medal. The budget isn't inexhaustable.

Peter, you're twelve years old. I'm ten. They have a word for people our age. They

Peter, you're twelve years old. I'm ten. They have a word for people our age. They call us children and they treat us like mice.

This emotion I'm feeling now, this is love, right? I don't know. Is it a longing?

This emotion I'm feeling now, this is love, right?"

"I don't know. Is it a longing? Is it a giddy stupid happiness just because you're with me?"

"Yes," she said.

"That's influenza," said Miro. "Watch for nausea or diarrhea within a few hours.

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

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

You’re not a human being until you value something more than the life of your body.

You’re not a human being until you value something more than the life of your body. And the greater the thing you live and die for the greater you are.

Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.. Orson Scott Card

Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.

When you hear a true story, there is a part of you that responds to it

When you hear a true story, there is a part of you that responds to it regardless of art, regardless of evidence. Let it be the most obvious fabrication and you will still believe whatever truth is in it, because you can not deny truth no matter how shabbily it is dressed.

A regime that wraps itself in the flag of truth fears truth most of all, for if its story is falsified to the slightest degree, its authority is gone.

What a laugh, though. To think that one human being could ever really know another. You could get used to each other, get so habituated that you could speak their words right along with them, but you never know why other people said what they said or did what they did, because they never even know themselves. Nobody understands anybody.

But it was not the boyish grin she had known when he bounded along the low-gravity inner corridors of Battle School. This smile had weariness in it, and old fears long mastered but still present. It was the smile of wisdom.

In philosophy class I think we finally decided that 'good' is an infinitely recursive term - it can't be defined except in terms of itself. Good is good because it's better than bad, though why it's better to be good than bad depends on how you define good, and on and on.

The wise are not wise because they make no mistakes. They are wise because they correct their mistakes as soon as they recognize them.

Fatherhood to us was an act of passion, soon forgot; but not to Orem ap Avonap. Never guessing that the blond and happy farmer was no blood of his, Orem had taken a part of that simple man into himself and saved it for this time. At any time in the Palace he might run by, Youth on this shoulders or, as time went by, toddling along behind.

Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf.

We have to go. I'm almost happy here.

Happiness is not a life without pain, but rather a life in which the pain is traded for a worthy price.

It will hurt." said Petra. "But let's make the most of what we have, and not let future pain ruin present happiness.

Sometimes happiness consists of finding the right balance of misery.

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.

It was not right, thought Han Fei-tzu, for his wife to die before him: her ancestor-of-the-heart had outlived her husband. Besides, wives should live longer than husbands. Women were more complete inside themselves. They were also better at living in their children. They were never as solitary as a man alone.

I carry the seeds of death within me and plant them wherever I linger long enough to love.

With life. Rooter says that life is how God gives purpose to the universe.

I have hope for you, if only because you're the only one left to hope for.

Ethan Wyeth: I hope you're thirsty."
Gideon Wyeth:"Why?"
Ethan: "Cause your dumb and ugly, but I can do something about thirsty.

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

When you have wisdom that another person knows that he needs, you give it freely. But when the other person doesn't yet know that he needs your wisdom you keep it to yourself. Food only looks good to a hungry man.

When you have faith in something a lot of other people believe then you a member of the church" said Ceas, "When you have faith in something nobody believes, then you a complete wacko

[No single] explanation will ever contain the final answer for all time, for all hearers. There is always, ALWAYS more to learn.

You frighten me, when you say there isn't time."
"I don't see why. Christians have been expecting the imminent end of the world for millennia."
"But it keeps not ending."
"So far, so good.

You were the one who threatened us with an Inquisitor," the Bishop reminded him. With a smile.

The Speaker's smile was just as chilly. "And you're the one who told the people I was Satan and they shouldn't talk to me.

And the voice of God was in the whirlwind after all, said Thor

I think you don't grow up until you stop worrying about other people's purposes or lack of them and find the purposes you believe in for yourself.

Your motivation has to be rock solid. You have to want it so bad that even th threat of death won't take it from you.

It's as if every conversation with a woman was a test, and men always failed it, because they always lacked the key to the code and so they never quite understood what the conversation was really about.

I knew her so well that I loved her, or maybe I loved her so well that I knew her. I didn't want to fight her anymore. I wanted to quit. I wanted to go home. So I blew up her planet.

Faith doesn't mean you never doubt. It only means you never act upon your doubts.

Anything can become a children's book if you give it to a child...Children are actually the best (and worst) audience for literature because they have no patience with pretence.

You're like, both like, Alexander the Great.'

We can't both be Alexander.'

Well sometimes I think you're two side of the same coin, and I'm the metal in between.

If you try and lose then it isn't your fault. But if you don't try and we lose, then it's all your fault.

I don't care how much you eat, Ender, self-cannibalism won't get you out of this school.

Ulysses was an elaborate prank, and our supposed intellectual elite continue to fall for it.

Another oral exam, huh?' Peter said.
'Shut up, Peter,' said Valentine.
'You should relax and enjoy it,' said Peter. 'It could be worse.'
'I don't know how.'
'It could be an anal exam.

Ender began to eat, slowly and carefully, pretending not to notice he was the center of attention.

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.

How much time? Not as much as I had yesterday.

We are wise to be cautious, but I suggest we prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

As god is my witness, it was never my intent to throw out the constitution. I thought it was hanging by a thread, and I could save it... You don't save it by cutting that thread. - President Nielson

We don't read novels to have an experience like life. Heck, we're living lives, complete with all the incompleteness. We turn to fiction to have an author assure us that it means something.

Order and disorder', said the speaker, 'they each have their beauty.

My father always said that government is like watching another man piss in your boot. Someone feels better but it certainly isn't you.

What we've done is make the categories of science fiction and fantasy larger, freer, and more inclusive than any other genre of contemporary literature. We have room for everybody, and we are extraordinarily open to genuine experimentation.

Guils is the greatest weapon vecause its cuts rarely heal and it aims for the heart

That's what so many people didn't understand about life. The real world is the one within the walls of homes; the outside world, of careers and politics and money and fame, that was the fake world, where nothing lasted, and things were real only to the extent they harmed or helped people inside their homes.

Twisted and perverse are the ways of the human mind," Jane intoned. "Pinocchio was such a dolt to try to become a real boy. He was much better off with a wooden head.

Stories are invented as you go along...

While you're governing the colony and I'm writing political philosophy, They'll never guess that in the darkness of night we sneak into each other's room and play checkers and have pillow fights.

The memory of the pain did not destroy the reality of the pleasure; grief did not obliterate joy.

So the whole war is because we can't talk to each other.

the power to cause pain is the only power that matters, the power to kill and destroy, because if you can't kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and one will ever save you.

So the whole war is beause we can't talk to each other.

When it comes down to it, though, the real decision is inevitable: If one of us has to be destroyed, let's make damn sure we're the ones alive at the end.

...What I depend on is a vigorous audience that can discover sweetness and light, beauty and truth, beyond the ability of the artist, on his own, to create them.

For it is in the millions of small melodies that the truth of history is always found, for history only matters because of the effects we see or imagine in the lives of the ordinary people who are caught up in, or give shape to, the great events.

History's got no bows on it, only frayed ends of ribbons and knots that can't be untied.

But shouldn't they still act like children? They aren't normal. They act like-history. Napoleon and Wellington. Caesar and Brutus.

After twenty-five years of marriage, they could see each other clearly without having to look.

I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it.

Those eyes had seen people weep, and had cared, and had hurt them again anyway. It’s a look that no human eyes should ever have.

Human: That's stupid. Isn't there grass on both sides?

Bean sighed inwardly. It never failed. Whenever he had any conversation with Ender, it turned into an argument.

Bean could see the hunger in their eyes. Not the regular hunger, for food, but the real hunger, the deep hunger, for family, for love, for belonging.

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

Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to fill the roles given you by good people, by people who love you.

Others find humanity by looking in their own hearts. Only lost souls need to search for it outside themselves.

Nights were so real that days began to seem dreamlike to him

In my dreams," said Ender, "I'm never sure whether I'm really me.

No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one's life is nothing. Even the most evil of men and women, if you understand their hearts, had some generous act that redeems them, at least a little, from their sins.

As a child of privilege, no one is your friend. They will claim to be your friends, they will laugh at your jokes and invite you to their parties, but they do not like you. They like your power, they like what you will become someday.

Human beings are free except when humanity needs them. Maybe humanity needs you. To do something. Maybe humanity needs me - to find out what you're good for. We might both do despicable things, Ender, but if humankind survives, then we were good tools.

Music isn't just a pleasure, a transient satisfaction. It's a need, a deep hunger; and when the music is right, it's joy. Love. A foretaste of heaven. A comfort in grief.

Is it too much to think that perhaps God speaks to us sometimes through music?

How, then, could I be so ungrateful as to refuse the message?

Rock and roll is music," said Vanya.
"Prokofiev is music, Stravinski is music, Tchaikovski and Borodin and Rimski-Korsakov and even Rachmaninov, THEY are music. Rock and roll is smart boys with no respect, YOU are rock and roll.

Because human nature never changes.

In a way she actually preferred Peter to other people because of this. He always acted out of intelligent self-interest.

Because these fools always look up for power. People above you, they never want to share power with you. Why you look to them? They give you nothing. People below you, you give them hope, you give them respect, they give you power, cause they don't think they have any, so they don't mind giving it up.

Home is anywhere that you know all your friends and all your enemies.

Where loyalty bound creatures together, they became something larger, something new and whole and inexplicable.

He felt like part of himself had been taken away, an inward prop that was holding up his courage and confidence.

That's the problem with winning right from the start, thought Ender. you lose friends.

You're bigger than I remember," she said stupidly.
"You too," he said. "I also remember that you were beautiful."
"Memory does play tricks on us."
"No. Your face is the same, but I don't remember what beautiful means anymore. Come on. Let's go out into the lake.

I've got a pretty good idea what children are, and we're not children. Children can lose sometimes, and nobody cares.

Panem et Circenses translates into 'Bread and Circuses.' The writer was saying that in return for full bellies and entertainment, his people had given up their political responsibilities and therefore their power.

The have influence, but no power."
"In my experience, influence is power.

In my experience, influence is power.

Achilles acted as if he had already won, and because the other kids followed him, he had.

I once heard a tale of a man who split himself in two.
The one part never changed at all; the other grew and grew.
The changeless part was always true, The growing part was always new,
And I wondered, when the tale was through, Which part was me, and which was you.

We care about moral issues, nobility, decency, happiness, goodness - the issues that matter in the real world, but which can only be addressed, in their purity, in fiction.

Oh no, real life is escape. The great terrors, the horrors-we hope-of your life come from reading fiction.

There is no society that does not highly value fictional storytelling. Ever.

All these uses a valid; all these reading of the book are "correct". For all these readers have placed themselves inside this story, not as spectators, but as participants, and so have looked at the world of Ender's Game, not with my eyes only, but also with their own.

Personal affection is a luxury you can have only after all your enemies are eliminated. Until then, everyone you love is a hostage, sapping your courage and corrupting your judgment.

A man without a wife and babies is a menace to civilization... One bachelor is an irritation. Ten thousand bachelors are a war.

The future is a hundred thousand threads, but the past is a fabric that can never be rewoven.

I stole their future from them; I can only being to repay by seeing what I can learn from their past.

Everyone was always in such a rush to shoot forward that they never took the time to look back. Which was a mistake. If you wanted to avoid snags, kinks, knots, and cuts, you had to "keep your mind on your line," as the saying went.

I cut the wood however I like, but it's the grain that decides the strength and shape of it. You can add and subtract memories from people, but it isn't just your memory that makes you who you are. There's something in the grain of the mind.

If you did not in your own mind distinguish between useful and erroneous information, then you were not learning at all, you were merely replacing ignorance with false belief, which was no improvement.

The essence of training is to allow error without consequence.

You take a step, then another. That’s the journey. But to take a step with your eyes open is not a journey at all, it’s a remaking of your own mind.

The only teacher that's worth anything to you is your enemy.

My master wishes to see you," said the mounted man.
"When the planting's done," I said.
"Lord Barton is unaccustomed to waiting."
"Then he should rejoice, for he'll learn something new today." I went back to the garden. Soon the servant left.

we have some good ideas here. But the only way to know if they’re workable is to try to make them fail. If we fail to fail, then maybe we’re on the right track.

who would expect less?" she said. " You're a Wiggin."
" Whatever that means." He said.
" It means that you are going to make a difference in the world.

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