Orson Scott Card Quote

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

Do not shout at me, Mr. Quill," said John [Adams]. "Justice may be blind, but she is not deaf.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in th...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

We humans do, when the cause is sufficient, spend our lives. We throw ourselves onto the grenade to ...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

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

What else should you be? Human beings didn't evolve brains in order to lie around on lakes. Killing'...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

If only we were wiser or better people, perhaps the gods would explain to us the mad, unbearable thi...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

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

Of course, I also hear from critics who detest what I do, and while sometimes I feel rather proud of...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

...it seemed a part of her life, to step from the ancient to the modern, back and forth. She felt ra...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Are you the strongest of all men, so strong that you can be merciful to me, a weak woman? Here is th...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

It's the middle class that feels the luxury of being able to have causes.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Of course they accused Marcão of having done it without provocation—that’s the way of torturers...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

I will remember this, thought Ender, when I am defeated. To keep dignity, and give honor where it's ...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

So you love me," said Petra softly when the kiss ended.

I'm a raging mass of hormones the...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

None of us could be happy for long, doing nothing.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

But in the military you don't get trusted positions just because of your ability. You also have to a...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Are you the strongest of all men, so strong that you can be merciful to me, a weak woman? Here is th...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

As long as you keep getting born, it's alright to die some times.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

So from then on, he looked at all his choices and said, What would a good person do, and then did it...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Twisted and perverse are the ways of the human mind," Jane intoned. "Pinocchio was such a dolt to tr...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

This is the Speaker for the Dead? Judging someone by appearances?"
"Maybe I've fallen in love...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

[T]hat's the way of torturers of every age, to put the blame on the victim, especially when he strik...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

I didn't want to see you."
"They told me."
"I was afraid that I'd still love you."
"I...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

I taught you everything you know. But I didn't teach you everything I know.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

the seed of doubt was there, and it stayed, and every now and then sent out a little root. It change...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

The essence of training is to allow error without consequence.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

I'm crazy," said Ender. "But I think I'm OK.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Grief, she reminded herself, is almost always for the mourner's loss.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

The only way to retrieve a secret,once known, is to replace it with a lie.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

I think you don't grow up until you stop worrying about other people's purposes or lack of them and ...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Stories are invented as you go along...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

But if you caught my informant,' said Achilles, 'why in the world would Chamrajnagar—or Graff, if ...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

I need to find out if I'm as good at peace as I am at war
ORSON SCOTT CARD

I'll become exactly the tool you want me to be, said Ender silently, but at least I wont be fooled i...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

I love you Ender. More than ever. No matter what you decide.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Don't launch it," said Bean into his microphone, head down. "Set it off inside your ship. God be wit...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

He didn't feel that way about anybody. You just live in the place you're in, you don't worry about w...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Once you get a brother, you don’t give him up easy.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Death is not a tragedy to the one who dies; to have wasted the life before that death, that is the t...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

And then he thought: Is this how idiots rationalize their stupidity to themselves?
ORSON SCOTT CARD

One bachelor is an irritation. Ten thousand bachelors are a war.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

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

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

What could go wrong... Doing some stupid impulsive thing that caused the death of drowthers was prac...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Too many people in the American media have lost any concept of loyalty to their country -- if they e...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Even the most evil of men and women, if you understand their hearts, had some generous act that rede...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

It was just him and me. He fought with honor. If it weren't for his honor, he and the others would h...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Unemployment is capitalism's way of getting you to plant a garden.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to be ...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

I hope I am remembered by my children as a good father.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

There is more good writing and good acting in any ten minutes of Twister than in, say, all of Citize...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

I say this as a Democrat, for whom the Republican domination of government threatens many values tha...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Ulysses, obviously. It was an elaborate prank, and our supposed intellectual elite continue to fall ...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in th...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

The education that prepared me was my general education classes, which I tried to avoid when I was a...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

There's a reason why every human society has fiction. It teaches us how to be 'good', to...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

…I had seen the princess and let her lie there unawakened, because the happily ever after was so d...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

We're like the wicked witch. We promise gingerbread, then eat the little brats alive.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

We're all trying to decide whether your scores up there are a miracle or a mistake."

"A h...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

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

There are times when the world is rearranging itself, and at times like that, the right words can ch...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along―the s...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not lo...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

In order to learn, one must change one's mind
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Everyone is naked. Everyone wants to hide. But life is sweet. Let it go on.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Most people I know are trying very hard to be good people ... that's how we define virtue,
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Whatever your gravity is when you get to the door, remember―the enemy's gate is down.
...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

There was no doubt now in Ender's mind. There was no help for him. Whatever he faced, now and foreve...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

I will never hurt you.
I will always help you.
If you are hungry
Ill give you my food...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

From you I can learn things that nobody knows.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

O my son Absalom,' Bean said softly, knowing for the first time the kind of anguish that could tear ...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Nero, you are an example to all the children on this shuttle. Because most of them are so foolish, t...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

I’m not one to despise other people for their sins. I haven’t found one yet, that I didn’t say...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

You get all the pleasures of the puppeteer.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Come into our home, daughters of Earth; dwell in our tunnels, harvest our fields; what we cannot do,...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Ender understood more than she said. Manipulation of gravity was one thing; deception by the officer...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

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

How much time? Not as much as I had yesterday.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

In the end it was only Peter who had something he could say from the heart.

"Am I the on...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

You don't have to eat the entire turd to know that it's not a crab cake.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Because these fools always look up for power. People above you, they never want to share power with ...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

He walked down the corridor, lined with his soldiers, who looked at him with love, with awe, with tr...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Everyone is naked. Everyone wants to hide. But life is sweet. Let it go on.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

The enemy's gate is down.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man stupid and blind in the eyes
ORSON SCOTT CARD

We've decided that your birthday present will be a car", said Marion.
Danny was touched. "But t...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

In my view, suicide is not really a wish for life to end.'
What is it then?'
It is the onl...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Being here alone with nothing to do, I've been thinking about myself too. Trying to understand why I...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Personal humiliation was painful. Humiliation of one's family was much worse. Humiliation of one's s...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

because if you can’t kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one wil...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

If only we could have talked to you, the hive-queen said in Ender's words. But since it could not be...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

I'm not a liar, sir,' she said.
"'No, I'm sure you sincerely become whatever it is you're prete...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

If words can be lethal weapons, I must provide them with an arsenal.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

When you have wisdom that another person knows that he needs, you give it freely. But when the other...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Keep this in mind - it only works because what's between you, that's real, that's what matters. Bill...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

As long as you keep getting born, it's alright to die some times.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

The priests say that God created our souls, and that just puts us under the control of another puppe...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

If pigs could vote, the man with the slop bucket would be elected swineherd every time, no matter ho...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

The only people who think children are carefree are the ones who've forgotten their own childhood.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

From now on, you forget about gravity before you go through that door. The old gravity is gone, eras...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

There's a reason why every human society has fiction. It teaches us how to be 'good,' to beha...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

With false names, on the right nets, they could be anybody. Old men, middle-aged women, anybody, as ...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Sickness and healing are in every heart; death and deliverance in every hand.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

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

Human beings are free except when humanity needs them. Maybe humanity needs you. To do something. Ma...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Peter, you're twelve years old. I'm ten. They have a word for people our age. They call us children ...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Sometimes lies were more dependable than the truth.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Remember, the enemy's gate is down.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not "true" because we're hungry...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

I've watched through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and I tell you he's the one.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

He could see Bonzo's anger growing hot. Hot anger was bad. Ender's anger was cold, and he could use ...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Changing the world is good for those who want their names in books. But being happy, that is for tho...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Well, I'm your man. I'm the bloody bastard you wanted when you had me spawned. I'm your tool, and wh...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

There's a reason why every human society has fiction. It teaches us how to be 'good,' to behave in a...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

She worked her toes into the sand, feeling the tiny delicious pain of the friction of tiny chips of ...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Let's fly away and live forever
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Besides," said Suriyawong. "This was not a rescue operation."
"What was it, target practice? Ch...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

In a way she actually preferred Peter to other people because of this. He always acted out of intell...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Individual human beings are all tools, that the others use to help us all survive.” “That’s a ...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

All is going well, very well, I couldn’t ask for anything better—
So why do I hate my life?
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Ender nodded. It was a lie, of course, that it wouldn’t hurt a bit. But since adults always said i...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

You don't know how to love people. You only know how to own them. And because people will never act ...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

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

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

Ningún ser humano es indigno cuando se comprenden sus motivos. Ninguna vida deja de merecer la pena...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Thrower started toward them at a trot, then remembered his dignity and walked the rest of the way. T...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

I came because I've spent my whole life in the company of the brother that I hated. Now I want a cha...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

This is how humans are: We question all our beliefs, except for the ones that we really believe in, ...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

The computer is also not famous for having mercy.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Graff had isolated Ender to make him struggle. To make him prove, not that he was competent, but tha...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

There's only one thing that will make them stop hating you. And that's being so good at what you do ...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one's life is nothing. Even the mo...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Bean sighed inwardly. It never failed. Whenever he had any conversation with Ender, it turned into a...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

What I want," he said softly, "is to stand in this meadow and walk in the light of the sun.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

The Buggers have finally, finally learned that we humans value each and every individual human life....
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Bean could see the hunger in their eyes. Not the regular hunger, for food, but the real hunger, the ...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Poke gave him life. Ender gave it meaning.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

The criminal misuse of time was pointing out the mistakes. Catching them―noticing them―that was ...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

She remembered the story from her childhood, about Adam and Eve in the garden, and the talking snake...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Humans mate with beings who challenge their supremacy. They have conflict between mates, not because...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

The lives of all people flow through time, and, regardless of how brutal one moment may be, how fill...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

When you hear a true story, there is a part of you that responds to it regardless of art, regardless...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Nights were so real that days began to seem dreamlike to him.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

We don't read novels to have an experience like life. Heck, we're living lives, complete with all th...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

It was possible, wasn't it, that he loved her, and that in this time of terrifying opportunity he wa...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along--the sa...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

He knew he could always be smart later, if that turned out to be a better strategy. But once you adm...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

The other four houses yielded jewelry, wallets, credit cards, laptops, iPads and Kindles, even a cou...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

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

Ender Wiggin isn't a killer. He just wins—thoroughly.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

I fell into playwriting accidentally, took some classes in it, and also took creative writing classe...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Unemployment is capitalism's way of getting you to plant a garden.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it i...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

I listen to music constantly while writing.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

God, our genes, our environment, or some stupid programmer keying in code at an ancient terminal - t...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Working is hard and distracts from having fun.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

I don't believe that there are aliens. I believe there are really different people.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

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

Personal affection is a luxury you can have only after all your enemies are eliminated. Until then, ...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Human beings may be miserable specimens, in the main, but we can learn, and, through learning, becom...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Fiction, because it is not about somebody who actually lived in the real world, always has the possi...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

I also remembered that you were beautiful."
"Memory does play tricks on us."
"No. Your fac...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

I don't care if I pass your test, I don't care if I follow your rules. If you can cheat, so can I. I...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

The story is one that you and I will construct together in your memory. If the story means anything ...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

The story itself, the true story, is the one that the audience members create in their minds, guided...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

We have to go. I'm almost happy here.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Ethan Wyeth: I hope you're thirsty."
Gideon Wyeth:"Why?"
Ethan: "Cause your dumb and ugly,...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

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

Soldiers can sometimes make decisions that are smarter than the orders they've been given.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Our great civilizations are nothing more than social machines to create the ideal female setting, wh...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Happiness can depend as easily on useless things as on useful ones.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Hive Queen: They never know anything. They don't have enough years in their little lives to come to ...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

It was not right, thought Han Fei-tzu, for his wife to die before him: her ancestor-of-the-heart had...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Others find humanity by looking in their own hearts. Only lost souls need to search for it outside t...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Quing-Jao: I am a slave to the gods, and I rejoice in it.
Jane: A slave who rejoices is a slave...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

It's the most charming thing about humans. You are all so sure that the lesser animals are bleeding ...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

I realized that everything important in sci-fi showed up in the magazines first. It's the proving gr...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Eko brushed a tear from her eye, and Immo jeered at her, but father held up a hand. "Never mock a te...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

In order to learn, one must change one's mind
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Most people I know are trying very hard to be good people ... that's how we define virtue,
ORSON SCOTT CARD

It's the middle class that feels the luxury of being able to have causes.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

For he loved her, as you can only love someone who is an echo of yourself at your time of deepest so...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

The enemy's gate is down.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

"Dread is the first and strongest of the...kinds of fear. It is that tension, that waiting that come...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man stupid and blind in the eyes
ORSON SCOTT CARD

[That wall] might be breached sometime in the future, but for now the only real conversation between...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Anything can become a children's book if you give it to a child...Children are actually the best (an...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Music isn't just a pleasure, a transient satisfaction. It's a need, a deep hunger; and when the musi...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Parents always make their worst mistakes with their oldest children. That's when parents know the le...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

I want to be the kind of boy you are, thought Bean. But I don’t want to go through what you’ve b...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

I don't freeze up because it isn't my battle. I'm helping. I'm watching. But I'm free. Because it's ...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

He would always speak the language of the heart with an awkward foreign accent.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

The highest beings of all are the ones who are willing to pay any personal cost for the good of thos...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Ender leaned his head against the wall of the corridor and cried until the bus came. I am just like ...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

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

But in the meantime I became accustomed to the writing life and it would be hard to change now - partly because of the salary cut if I went to my other love, teaching; and partly because I still have stories to tell, even though it isn't all that fun doing the work anymore.

Orson Scott Card

Share:

Related

More Orson Scott Card