Orson Scott Card Quotes

Among my most prized possessions are words that I have never spoken.

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've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it

Ender Wiggin must believe that no matter what happens, no adult will ever, ever step in to help him in any way.

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.

Unemployment is capitalism's way of getting you to plant a garden.

We're like the wicked witch. We promise gingerbread, then eat the little brats alive.

Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.

There's only one thing that will make them stop hating you. And that's being so good at what you do that they can't ignore you

There is more good writing and good acting in any ten minutes of Twister than in, say, all of Citizen Kane.

The wise are not wise because they make no mistakes. They are wise because they correct their mistakes as soon as they recognize them.

Ender didn't like fighting. He didn't like Peter's kind, the strong against the weak, and he didn't like his own kind either, the smart against the stupid.

One judge is coughing his life out into bloody handkerchiefs and the other is burying his wife, and you think this is how God answers your prayers?

I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.

Madness, and then illumination.

There are times when the world is rearranging itself, and at times like that, the right words can change the world.

Sometimes lies were more dependable than the truth.

Every day people judge all other people. The question is whether they judge wisely.

If pigs could vote, the man with the slop bucket would be elected swineherd every time, no matter how much slaughtering he did on the side.

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.

It is in the turmoil of chaos that we discover what, if anything, we are.

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.

There's a sort of rage a man feels when he's been deceived where he most trusted. It compares to no other anger.

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.

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.

because if you can’t kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one will ever save you.

You can't change what you don't understand.

No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one's life is nothing.

You know how writers are... they create themselves as they create their work. Or perhaps they create their work in order to create themselves.

Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don't see any.

Faith doesn't mean you never doubt. It only means you never act upon your doubts.

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.

Apparently the Dutch now prided themselves on being better at queues than the English, which was absurd, because standing cheerfully in line was the English national sport.

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.

An eye for an eye? How Christian of you.' Unbelievers always want other people to act like Christians.

Fiction, because it is not about somebody who actually lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself.

All is going well, very well, I couldn’t ask for anything better— So why do I hate my life?

I've seen Australia and I've lived on an asteroid and I'd take the asteroid.

Happiness is not a life without pain, but rather a life in which the pain is traded for a worthy price.

Bean could see the hunger in their eyes. Not the regular hunger, for food, but the real hunger, the deep hunger, for family, for love, for belonging.

This emotion I'm feeling now, this is love, right?

Early to bed and early to rise," Mazer intoned, "makes a man stupid and blind in the eyes.

I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration.

Every person is defined by the communities she belongs to.

When there aren't any smart decisions, I suppose you just have to pick the stupid decision you like best.

Once you have the gallows, you'll find new reasons to hang people from it.

I taught you everything you know. But I didn't teach you everything I know.

I hope I am remembered by my children as a good father.

In order to learn, one must change one's mind.

Human beings may be miserable specimens, in the main, but we can learn, and, through learning, become decent people.