Enchantment Quotes

“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.”
― Orson Scott Card, Enchantment

“The old tale of Sleeping Beauty might end happily in French or English, but he was in Russia, and only a fool would want to live through the Russian version of any fairy tale.”
― Orson Scott Card, Enchantment

“Americans love to pick up, move on, start over. But instead of being somebody fresh and new, they become somebody lonely and lost, or, far too often these days, they become nobody at all, a machine for satisfying hunger, without loyalty or honor or duty.”
― Orson Scott Card, Enchantment

“Endurance, after all, was a kind of victory; a kind of heroism, too.”
― Orson Scott Card, Enchantment

“What good were the rules of time when the rules of magic contradicted them.”
― Orson Scott Card, Enchantment

“Then they, too, lay down on mattresses stuffed with straw, hearing the music of the flies to buzz them to sleep, holding each other's hands as they dozed, thinking of the miracles by which love works its will in the world.”
― Orson Scott Card, Enchantment

“Before we are citizens, he thought, we are children, and it is as children that we come to understand freedom and authority, liberty and duty. I have done my duty. I have bowed to authority. Mostly. And now, like Russia, I can set aside those burdens for a little while and see what happens.”
― Orson Scott Card, Enchantment

“Running was the way he dreamed. Having never been in control of his life, his idea of freedom was simply to break free. He dreamed of being at the mercy of the wind, carried aloft and blown here and there, a life of true randomness instead of always being part of someone else's purpose.”
― Orson Scott Card, Enchantment

“And it occurred to me that what we professors think of as a 'brilliant student' is nothing but a student who is enthusiastically converted to whatever idiotic ideas we've been teaching them.”
― Orson Scott Card, Enchantment

“[Ruthie] ... 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?”
― Orson Scott Card, Enchantment

“You get used to being naked, that's the first thing that Ivan discovered. Crashing through thick brush with branches snagging at your bare skin, you stop worrying about who's looking and and spend your time trying to keep yourself from being flayed alive. He got shy again when they entered the village, but once he decided simply to let the gawkers gawk, he found himself much more interested in what he was seeing than what they were.”
― Orson Scott Card, Enchantment

“Now that she knew credit cards were valuable, Baba Yaga began to collect as many of them as she could.”
― Orson Scott Card, Enchantment

“That’s the way of the world: The princess can disappear, but the witch is forever.”
― Orson Scott Card, Enchantment

“Was that tragedy? Or was that comedy? Was there really any difference?”
― Orson Scott Card, Enchantment

“In Russia you learn patience," said Ivan. "In America you learn action.”
― Orson Scott Card, Enchantment

“You know what I was thinking? [Ruthie] got so excited when she was spouting this ahistorical countertextual nonsense, and I caught myself thinking, 'What an idiot her teacher must be,' and thinking about her teacher made me realize - the kind of excitement she was showing as she mindlessly spouted back the nonsense she learned in college, that's just like the excitement some of my own students show. And it occurred to me that what we professors think of as a 'brilliant student' is nothing but a student who is enthusiastically converted to whatever idiotic ideas we've been teaching them."

"Self-knowledge is a painful thing," said Esther. "To learn that your best students are parrots after all.”
― Orson Scott Card, Enchantment

“Women always said things like that, and it made him crazy. 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. If, just once, the man could understand, really comprehend the whole of the conversation, then the perfect union between male and female would be possible. But instead men and women continue to cohabit, even to love each other, without ever quite crossing over the chasm of misunderstanding between them.”
― Orson Scott Card, Enchantment

“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.”
― Orson Scott Card, Enchantment

“Like running the hurdles. Work so hard, jump over every one, fast, high enough but no higher, because you can't afford to hang in the air. And then, when the race is over, you're dripping with sweat, either they beat you or you beat them ... and then a couple of guys come out and move the hurdles out of the way. Turns out they were nothing. All that work to jump over them, but now they're gone.”
― Orson Scott Card, Enchantment

“You’ve lost faith in yourself? Isn’t that rich? A god who’s become a self-atheist!”
― Orson Scott Card, Enchantment

“The prospect of sharing the rest of their lives held no dread for them. . . every word and movement between them carried their history and their future like background movement, shaping each moment even when they weren't aware of it.”
― Orson Scott Card, Enchantment

“God must have so ordained this world, and that gave hope to the righteous no matter how bleak their cause.”
― Orson Scott Card, Enchantment

“Mother’s ironic vision of life as one prank after another, in the midst of which you did what was needed.”
― Orson Scott Card, Enchantment

“She paid using the prettiest credit card, and then left it with the ticket seller as a gift. Along with a minor curse—a bladder infection and diarrhea—just because she was Baba Yaga, and certain things were expected.”
― Orson Scott Card, Enchantment

“Witchcraft and wizardry had so effectively been denied that his own powers began to weaken, for there were few who contributed to his strength by invoking his name.”
― Orson Scott Card, Enchantment

“You can tell a lie now and then, but what happens to you when you try to live your whole life inside a lie?”
― Orson Scott Card, Enchantment

“And it might also be that God had nothing to do with it, that it was just the moment that it would have happened anyway, whether she prayed or not.”
― Orson Scott Card, Enchantment

“Ivan couldn’t think of a religion that was any damn good at making utter truthtellers out of its practitioners. Maybe the Quakers were truly plainspoken at one time, but even they managed to squeeze out a Richard Nixon after a few hundred years of suppressing their human propinquity for untruth.”
― Orson Scott Card, Enchantment

“There’s no part of the ceremony where the priest, acting in the place of God, warns the guests not to murder the bridegroom because it might jeopardize the succession.”
― Orson Scott Card, Enchantment

“And Bear absolutely refused to eat humans while they were still alive, with the feeble excuse that when they weren’t dead they made too much noise and moved around too much. To Yaga, that was just another proof of Bear’s laziness. Godhood was assigned to the most unworthy people.”
― Orson Scott Card, Enchantment