Orson Scott Card Quotes

born 1951 United States

Orson Scott Card (born August 24, 1951) is an American author working in numerous genres. He is best known for his novel Ender's Game and its many sequels.

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Also known as: Card, Orson Scott, Ender

Random Orson Scott Card quote

335 quotes

If he was a good man, how could he leave me? So he must not be a good man. But if he isn't good, then why does it hurt so much to lose him? Is it just my pride that's wounded?

Enchantment (1999)

You are not what you seem.
So many people have said that that I'm beginning to think that's precisely how I do seem. What is it I seem to be that you have now discovered that I'm not?

Treason (1988)

That was the most terrible thing that a woman could [??] to a decent man: look vulnerable and ask him for mercy. If he refused her he'd be denying all his instincts as a provider and protector.

Homebody (1998)

They are beautiful monsters... And when they live in a network of peace and hope, when they trust the world and their deepest hungers are fulfilled, then within that system, that delicate web, there is joy. That is what we live for, to bind the monsters together, to murder their fear and give birth to their beauty.

Wyrms (1987)

Don't lie to me! Don't seem so normal when I know you have cut yourself off from me in your heart! If you can put on our affectionate closeness like a mask, then I'll never be able to take joy in it again.

Earthfall (1995)

To me, the truth is what actually happened. Yet it is impossible to know anything approaching the whole truth about past events. Even the people living them could not possibly understand. That truth is always out of reach.

Saints (1983)

Here's the secret that every successful software company is based on: You can domesticate programmers the way beekeepers tame bees. You can't exactly communicate with them, but you can get them to swarm in one place and when they're not looking, you can carry off the honey.

[He] looked death in the eye and did not seem disappointed.

Songmaster (1979)

Only a fool can't be fooled.

Songmaster (1979)

I want to see the king.
Wonderful. I'm glad for you.
Why are you so glad?
Because it's good for every human being to have an unfulfilled wish. It makes all of life so poignant.

Treason (1988)

“I always play with everybody,” said Honoré. “It is my vocation. God put me on the earth to do with people what cats do to mice. Play with them, chew the last bit of life out of them, them pick them up in my mouth and drop them on people’s doorsteps. That is the business of literature.”

Heartfire (1998)

“You're such a liar.”
“But I’m a beautiful liar, don’t you think?” She flashed her best smile at her friend.
“I don’t understand what men see in women anyway,” her friend answered. “Hexes or no hexes, as long as a woman has her clothes on a man can’t see what he’s interested in anyhow.”

Alvin Journeyman (1995)

Road poured out into a place of meadows and a few White man's buildings. Lots of wagons. Horses posted and tied, grazing on the meadow grass. Sounds of metal hammers ringing, chopping of axes in the wood, screech of saws going back and forth, all kinds of White-man forest-killing sounds. A White man's town.

Red Prophet (1988)

What Alvin figured out was that when you're Making, you don't use people like tools. You don't wear them out to achieve your purpose. You wear yourself out helping them achieve theirs. You wear yourself out teaching and guiding, persuading and listening to advice and letting folks persuade you, when it happens they're right.

Alvin Journeyman (1995)

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

Attributed

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Orson Scott Card (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.