Orson Scott Card
None of us could be happy for long, doing nothing.Collection: Long
The ways of love are strange and hard: The love you want is always barred; The love you have you want to change. The ways of love are hard and strange.Collection: Love You
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.Collection: Life Lesson
What you are is a man who means to be good, and undo the bad he's done, and that's as good as any man ever gets.Collection: Mean
Ethan Wyeth: I hope you're thirsty." Gideon Wyeth:"Why?" Ethan: "Cause your dumb and ugly, but I can do something about thirsty.Collection: Dumb
It was just him and me. He fought with honor. If it weren't for his honor, he and the others would have beaten me together. They might have killed me, then. His sense of honor saved my life. I didn't fight with honor . . . I fought to win.Collection: Life
Love is finding that the things you like best about yourself are not in you at all, but in the person who completes youCollection: Love Is
Human: That's stupid. Isn't there grass on both sides?Collection: Stupid
And yet.. even if you had been right, it would only have been by accident. A broken clock is right two times a day.Collection: Two
The great forces of history were real, after a fashion. But when you examined them closely, those great forces always came down to the dreams and hungers and judgments of individuals.Collection: Dream
Short stories are designed to deliver their impact in as few pages as possible. A tremendous amount is left out, and a good short story writer learns to include only the most essential information.Collection: Writing
...You believe that the kind of story you want to tell might be best received by the science fiction and fantasy audience. I hope you're right, because in many ways this is the best audience in the world to write for. They're open-minded and intelligent. They want to think as well as feel, understand as well as dream. Above all, they want to be led into places that no one has ever visited before. It's a privilege to tell stories to these readers, and an honour when they applaud the tale you tell.Collection: Dream
To have a choice at all is to be free - even when the choice is between two terrible things.Collection: Two
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.Collection: Love
Human beings 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.Collection: Humanity
Evil people naturally assume that you will use that power exactly as they would use it.Collection: Evil People
Home is anywhere that you know all your friends and all your enemies.Collection: Home
Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.Collection: Inspirational
Sometimes lies were more dependable than the truth.Collection: Lying
I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.Collection: Believe
In philosophy class I think we finally decided that 'good' is an infinitely recursive term - it can't be defined except in terms of itself. Good is good because it's better than bad, though why it's better to be good than bad depends on how you define good, and on and on.Collection: Philosophy
Soldiers can sometimes make decisions that are smarter than the orders they've been given.Collection: Military
The danger that keeps me just a little frightened with every book I write, however, is that I'll overreach myself once too often and try to write a story that I'm just plain not talented or skilful enough to write. That's the dilemma every storyteller faces. It is painful to fail. But it is far sadder when a storyteller stops wanting to try.Collection: Pain
Life is full of grief, to exactly the degree we allow ourselves to love other people.Collection: Grief
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. --From the IntroductionCollection: Real
You frighten me, when you say there isn't time." "I don't see why. Christians have been expecting the imminent end of the world for millennia." "But it keeps not ending." "So far, so good.Collection: Christian
How long before married people answer the dictators thus: Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn.Collection: Children
the seed of doubt was there, and it stayed, and every now and then sent out a little root. It changed everything, to have that seed growing. It made Ender listen more carefully to what people meant, instead of what they said. It made him wise.Collection: Wise
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.Collection: Men
It has been my experience that the better a man you are, the more folks there are who resent you for it, and find occasion to get angry at you no matter how kindly meant your deeds may be.Collection: Men
My father always said that government is like watching another man piss in your boot. Someone feels better but it certainly isn't you.Collection: Father
You understand that the piggies are animals, and you no more condemn them for murdering Libo and Pipo than you condemn a cabra for shewing up capim." That's right," said Miro. Ender smiled. "And that's why you'll never learn anything from them. Because you think of them as animals.Collection: Animal
I always think of books as being like people. Even the dull ones are worthy of decent respect, but you don't have to seek them out and spend time with them.Collection: Book
Nobodys life ever goes according to plan. So why do we keep on planning? Because that's how we know who we are. By what we intend to be. By what we try to become. And fail. I don't say 'fail'. I saw we aim and miss. But we still hit something.Collection: Missing
Let me be loved like that, by a man who will not replace me with concubines when I'm old and ugly. Let me be loved by a man who loves God more than me.Collection: Men
And what? What's the other choice? To passively let things happen and then say: "Tut-tut, what at botch that was"? Don't we all manipulate people? Even if we openly ask them to make a choice, don't we try to frame it so they'll chose as we think they should?Collection: Thinking
Oh, Val," said Father. "All you have to do is live your life, and everyone around you will be happier." "No greatness, then." "Val," said Mother, "goodness trumps greatness any day." "Not in the history books," said Valentine. "Then the wrong people are writing history, aren't they?" said Father.Collection: Mother
Firequencher raised his hand. "I've been staying out of family conversations. Do I get credit for that?Collection: Hands
No book, however good, can survive a hostile reading.Collection: Book
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.Collection: Loyalty
So you love me," said Petra softly when the kiss ended. I'm a raging mass of hormones thet I'm too young to understand," said Bean. "You're a female of a closely related species. According to all the best primatologists, I really have no choice." That's nice," she said.Collection: Nice
Where ideas are real and reality is shadow.Collection: Real
nobody ever wrote to me saying"you know ender's game was a pretty good book, but you know what it really needs a n introduction!".....so be assured the novel stands on its own, and if you skip this intro and go straight to the story, i not only won't stand in your way i'll even agree with you!Collection: Book
yesterday someone sent a message that was signed GOD! bernard said. really? dap said. i didn't know he was signed onto the systemCollection: Yesterday
I'm putting you in Dink Meeker's toon. From now on, as far as you're concerned, Dink Meeker is God." "Then who are you?" "The personnel officer who hired God.Collection: Concerned
Sickness and healing are in every heart; death and deliverance in every hand.Collection: Healing
It will hurt." said Petra. "But let's make the most of what we have, and not let future pain ruin present happiness.Collection: Hurt
Order and disorder', said the speaker, 'they each have their beauty.Collection: Order
For it is in the millions of small melodies that the truth of history is always found, for history only matters because of the effects we see or imagine in the lives of the ordinary people who are caught up in, or give shape to, the great events.Collection: People