Orson Scott Card

Author

• "I want to understand everything," said Miro. "I want to know everything and put it all together to see what it means."
  "Excellent project," she [Jane] said. "It will look very good on your resume."
• "We become one tribe because we say we're one tribe."
• "Her action ... meant one thing to him and something quite different to her; it was so different that it was not even the same event."
• "When you decide to hide something from me, will you at least tell me that aren't going to tell me?"
• "Well, I wish I could tell you that Ender is like me, but Ender is very, very smart."
• "Fiction is a very poor tool for conversion, because if I label it as fiction then I'm telling you it's a pack of lies from the very start."
• "Everyone you say who says that they have no religious beliefs is just so certain about their belief that they accept it as truth. If you just start asking probing questions, and they start getting mad, then you've found their religion."
• "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."
• "Faster than light travel — do I think it could happen in the way I describe? [snort] No."
• "I don't believe that there are aliens. I believe there are really different people."
• "Catholics will see anything that can talk as a baptizable person."
• "There are science fiction readers and science fiction convention attenders, and they are very different groups."
• "If you write like James Joyce, you will have an audience of twenty. The other nineteen — besides your mother, because your father won't read it — will only be reading it to find out how on earth you got published."
• "We're still struggling to find a significant amount of intelligence here, so no."
  • on whether he believes in extraterrestial life.
• "If I read it in the newspapers, it's probably wrong. If I read it in the major news magazines, it's hopelessly wrong."
• "You need to remember that what you're dealing with here is the ideas I had when I was 16 that I'm putting in my fiction now."
  • with regards to "philotes" in the Ender's Game series
• "Tell the story plainly and clearly."
• "The criminal misuse of time was pointing out the mistakes. Catching them – noticing them – that was essential. If you did not in your own mind distinguish between useful and erroneous information, then you were not learning at all, you were merely replacing ignorance with false belief, which was no improvement."
• "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."
• "Which is why she knew that her feelings toward Bean were completely different. No such dreams and fantasies. Just a sense of complete acceptance. She belonged with Bean, not the way that a wife belonged with a husband or, God forbid, a girlfriend with a boyfriend, but rather the way the left hand belonged to the right. They simply fit. Nothing exciting about it, nothing to write home about. But it could be counted on."
• "You can't defeat a powerful enemy unless you understand him completely, and you can't understand him unless you know the desires of his heart, and you can't know the desires of his heart until you truly love him."
• "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."
• "Many who were listening felt a vague disquiet. They had expected oration. Instead the Speaker's voice was nothing remarkable. And his words had none of the formality of religious speech. Plain, simple, almost conversational. Only a few of them noticed that its very simplicity made his voice, his speech utterly believable. He wasn't telling the Truth, with trumpets; he was telling the truth, the story that you wouldn't think to doubt because it's taken for granted."
• "But you tell me that you loved her, though she was an adulteress. Isn't she the same person tonight? Has she changed between yesterday and today? Or is it only you who have changed?"
• "I loved Libo, the way everybody in Milagre loved him. But he was willing to be a hypocrite, and so were you, and without anybody even guessing, the poison of your lies hurt us all. I don't blame you, Mother, or him. But I thank God for the Speaker. He was willing to tell us the truth, and it set us free."
• "[They] have a higher allegiance to their own conscience than to the rules others set down for them. It's a failing, if your object is to maintain order, but if your goal is to learn and adapt, it's a virtue."
• "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."
• "There are worse reasons to die...than to die because you cannot bear to kill."
• "Only stupid men trying to seem smart need to be with dumb women. Only weak men trying to look strong are attracted to compliant women."
  • John Paul Wiggin in "Teacher's Pest"