Orson Scott Card
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.Collection: Travel
It just gripes me hollow, the way God always sneaks in to take the credit.Collection: Sneak In
I've seen Australia and I've lived on an asteroid and I'd take the asteroid.Collection: Australia
That is the ultimate power, to stare death in the face and be unafraid.Collection: Faces
Knowing something may be a terrible burden to bear, but it holds no danger to them as aren't afraid of truth.Collection: Knowing
It wasn't so bad being a slave when your owner was yourself and stood up for you.Collection: Slave
Where do you draw the line between a humble man who knows his own weaknesses but tries to act out virtues he hasn't quite mastered yet, and a proud man who pretends to have those virtues without the slightest intention of acquiring them?Collection: Humble
When both parties are lying and they both know the other party's lying, it comes powerful close to being the same thing as telling the truth.Collection: Powerful
Religion is tied to the deepest feelings people have. The love that arises from that stewing pot is the sweetest and strongest, but the hate is the hottest, and the anger is the most violent.Collection: Hate
My hands are clean, but not because I wasn't prepared to bloody them.Collection: Hands
At some point, every science fiction and fantasy story must challenge the reader's experience and learning. That's much of the reason why the genre is so open to experimentation and innovation that other genres reject--strangeness is our bread and butter. Spread it thick or slice it thin, it's still our staff of life.Collection: Genre Is
You grow a whole lot more as a writer by getting old stories out of the house and letting new ones come in and live with you until they grow up and are ready to go. Don't let the old ones stay there and grow fat and cranky and eat all the food out of the refrigerator. You have dozens of generations of stories inside you, but the only way to make room for the new ones is to write the old ones and mail them off.Collection: Growing Up
Religion makes them crazy. Not a woman I ever met wasn't crazy with religion.Collection: Crazy
We don't admit it to ourselves, not until the very moment of death, but in that moment, we see all life before us and we understand how we chose, every day of our lives, the manner of our death.Collection: Moments
I've learned much, Father, and this above all: that no station in life is above any other, if it's occupied by someone with a good heart.Collection: Father
War was never so careful as to inflict suffering only where it was merited.Collection: War
Who would I be, if other good souls did not make up for my shortcomings?Collection: Soul
Once you have the gallows, you'll find new reasons to hang people from it.Collection: People
To expect wickedness from human beings is the best way I know of to avoid surprises. And when I am surprised, it's always pleasantly.Collection: Wickedness
I'm neutral on lying, seeing as how there's times when the truth just hurts people.Collection: Hurt
How short life is for fools.Collection: Short Life
It is the essence of dignity to pretend to desire what you cannot prevent.Collection: Essence
A rustic setting always suggests fantasy; to suggest science fiction, you need sheet metal and plastic. You need rivets.Collection: Needs
I don't know a soul who doesn't maintain two separate lists of doctrines the ones that they believe that they believe; and the ones that they actually try to live by.Collection: Believe
Just because the only way you can maintain control over your bodily passions is to sit straight in your chair, knees together, hands delicately arranged in our lap, fingers tightly intertwined, does not mean that I am required to do the same.Collection: Passion
The dreamers always seem to think their dream is worth the price that other people will pay. They also delude themselves that they will control whatever evil they use to try to bring about their dream.Collection: Dream
In creating the strange milieu in which your story takes place, you must first understand as well as you possibly can the familiar milieu in which your own life is taking place. Until you have examined and comprehended the world around you, you can't possibly create a complex and believable imaginary world.Collection: Creating
I think Santa Claus is, by and large, quite beneficial, for when the child is finally allowed -- or forced -- to recognize the nonexistence of Santa Claus, then the child is able to go through the vital intellectual process of reconstructing reality in light of new evidence, complete with back-forming new stories to account for past events. This prepares the child for many other disillusionments and gives her vital and well-supported experience in maintaining her grip on reality independent of the stories told to her at any given time.Collection: Children
A library is the first step of a thousand journeys, portal to a thousand worlds.Collection: Journey
It's simple. Nothing exists except in relation to something else.Collection: Simple
The first of a thousand lies. Truth flowed to Micah Quill, was sucked in and disappeared, and emerged again looking ever so much like it used to, but changed subtly, at the edges, where none would notice, so that simple truth became a complicated fabric indeed, one that could wrap you up so tightly and close you off from the air until you suffocated in it.Collection: Lying
Maybe we're the fools, for thinking we know things. Maybe humans are the only ones who can deal with the fact that nothing can ever be known at all.Collection: Thinking
The difference between science fiction and fantasy … is simply this: science fiction has rivets and fantasy has trees.Collection: Differences
The only people who ever prize purity of ignorance are those who profit from a monopoly on knowledge.Collection: Ignorance
Human beings are free except when humanity needs them.Collection: Freedom
A weak King must be what other Kings have been; a strong King is himself, and from then on the meaning of the name of King is changed.Collection: Strong
In a way, being a Mormon prepares you to deal with science fiction, because we live simultaneously in two very different cultures. The result is that we all know what it's like to be strangers in a strange land. It's not just a coincidence that there are so many effective Mormon science fiction writers. We don't regard being an alien as an alien experience. But it also means that we're not surprised when people don't understand what we're saying or what we think.Collection: Mean
Satanic Verses is a despicable book that could not have been written by a person who wished to behave decently and responsibly.Collection: Book
Your dream is a good one. [. . .] The desire that is the very root of life itself: To grow until all the space you can see is part of you, under your control. It's the desire for greatness.Collection: Dream
[T]he politically correct are above the rules of ordinary civility, once they have identified you as an unbeliever in their religion.Collection: Ordinary
And above all, what does being liberal have to do with opposing, or, uh, supporting the war against terror? Our enemies in the war against terror are so anti-liberal that you would think it would be liberals leaping to protect the world from these monstrous ideologies.Collection: War
I merely observe that all living things are manipulated. As long as there is a will, it is bent and twisted constantly. Only the dead are allowed the luxury of freedom, and then only because they want nothing, and therefore can't be thwarted.Collection: Luxury
I always tell what I believe. Whether it's true, I'm no more sure than any man.Collection: Believe
If the Church has no the authority to tell its members that they may not engage in homosexual practices, then it has no authority at all. And if we accept the argument of the hypocrites of homosexuality that their sin is not a sin, we have destroyed ourselves.Collection: Hypocrite
I will love you forever, he thought. I am lying, he thought, and this time he was rightCollection: Time
The Lord took twice the time making thee, Alvin Smith, cause it took that long to put the mischief in.Collection: Time
His vices were the vices of his time and culture, but his virtues transcended the milieu of his life.Collection: Time
He is dead, she thought bitterly, because we have forgotten him.Collection: Forgotten
I don't freeze up because it isn't my battle. I'm helping. I'm watching. But I'm free. Because it's Ender's game.Collection: Games