Orson Scott Card > Quotes

“Ethan Wyeth: I hope you're thirsty."
Gideon Wyeth:"Why?"
Ethan: "Cause your dumb and ugly, but I can do something about thirsty.”
― 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, The Folk of the Fringe

“Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

“This is how humans are: We question all our beliefs, except for the ones that we really believe in, and those we never think to question."
- Andrew Wiggin”
― Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead

“I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not "true" because we're hungry for another kind of truth: the mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all: our own self-story. Fiction, because it is not about someone who lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself. ”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

“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.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

“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.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

“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 won't let you beat me unfairly - I'll beat you unfairly first.
- Ender ”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

“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.”
― Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead

“Remember, the enemy's gate is down.”
― Orson Scott Card

“Life is full of grief, to exactly the degree we allow ourselves to love other people.”
― Orson Scott Card

“Love is finding that the things you like best about yourself are not in you at all, but in the person who completes you”
― Orson Scott Card, Sarah

“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, Ender's Game

“Early to bed and early to rise," Mazer intoned, "makes a man stupid and blind in the eyes.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

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

“When you really know somebody you can’t hate them. Or maybe it’s just that you can’t really know them until you stop hating them.”
― Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead

“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?”
― Orson Scott Card

“Sometimes lies were more dependable than the truth.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

“You're a monster.
Thanks. Does this mean I get a raise?
No, just a medal. The budget isn't inexhaustable.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

“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.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

“I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

“Madness, and then illumination.”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

“Happiness is not a life without pain, but rather a life in which the pain is traded for a worthy price.”
― Orson Scott Card, Pastwatch

“He's not a killer. He just wins... Thoroughly”
― Orson Scott Card

“She worked her toes into the sand, feeling the tiny delicious pain of the friction of tiny chips of silicon against the tender flesh between her toes. That's life. It hurts, it's dirty, and it feels very, very good.”
― Orson Scott Card, Children of the Mind

“My needs are simple and few, thought Valentine. Food. Clothing. A comfortable place to sleep. And no idiots.

But of course a world with no idiots would be lonely. If she herself were even allowed there.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender in Exile

“Home is anywhere that you know all your friends and all your enemies.”
― Orson Scott Card, Hart's Hope

“Changing the world is good for those who want their names in books. But being happy, that is for those who write their names in the lives of others, and hold the hearts of others as the treasure most dear.”
― Orson Scott Card, Children of the Mind

“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.”
― Orson Scott Card, Children of the Mind

“You know how writers are... they create themselves as they create their work. Or perhaps they create their work in order to create themselves.”
― Orson Scott Card

“And enough for me that when my hand touched your shoulder, you leaned on me; and when you felt me slip away, you called my name.”
― Orson Scott Card

“Please don't disillusion me. I haven't had breakfast yet.”
― Orson Scott Card, Children of the Mind

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

“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.”
― Orson Scott Card, The Worthing Chronicle

“The wise are not wise because they make no mistakes. They are wise because they correct their mistakes as soon as they recognize them.”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

“She will look at you as women look at men, and she will judge you as a woman judge men...not on the strength of their arguments, and not in their cleverness or prowess in battle, but rather on the force of their character, the intensity of their passion, their strength of soul, their compassion, and...ah, this above all...their conversation.”
― Orson Scott Card, Pastwatch

“I need you to be clever, Bean. I need you to think of solutions to problems we haven't seen yet. I want you to try things that no one has ever tried because they're absolutely stupid.”
― Orson Scott Card

“In my view, suicide is not really a wish for life to end.'
What is it then?'
It is the only way a powerless person can find to make everybody else look away from his shame. The wish is not to die, but to hide.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow

“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.”
― Orson Scott Card

“Humans 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.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

“I also remembered 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.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

“All the stories are fictions. What matters is which fiction you believe.”
― 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, Ender's Game

“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

“Ender Wiggin isn't a killer. He just wins--thoroughly.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

“Being young is an 18 year prison sentence for a crime your parents committed. But you do get time off for good behavior.”
― Orson Scott Card, Empire

“An enemy, Ender Wiggin," whispered the old man. "I am your enemy, the first one you've ever had who was smarter than you. There is no teacher but the enemy. No one but the enemy will tell you what the enemy is going to do. No one but the enemy will ever teach you how to destroy and conquer. Only the enemy shows you where you are weak. Only the enemy tells you where he is strong. And the rules of the game are what you can do to him and what you can stop him from doing to you. I am your enemy from now on. From now on I am your teacher.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

“As long as you keep getting born, it's all right to die sometimes”
― Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead

“I will never hurt you.
I will always help you.
If you are hungry
Ill give you my food.
If you are frightened
I am your friend.
I love you now.
And love does not end.”
― Orson Scott Card, Songmaster

“Everybody dies. What matters is what you do between now and when it happens to you.”
― Orson Scott Card, Treasure Box