Orson Scott Card
American author working in numerous genres.
His vices were the vices of his time and culture, but his virtues transcended the milieu of his life.
But whether there's some grand design really matters little to me. My only hope was this: to see what might be, to believe that it should be, and then to do all I could to bring it to pass, whatever the cost.
This is what I want to do forever, each one thought. Rise in the morning, come to the mill, and work all day with him beside me. Never mind that the wish was impossible. Never mind that they might never see each other again, once the boy left for his apprenticeship back in the place of his birth. That only added to the sweetness of the moment, which would soon become a memory, would soon become a dream.
Only a fool can't be fooled.
I had never believed I had a soul until then, when it laid bare a hurt more deep than any part of me could bear.
The environment that nutures creative programmers kills management and marketing types - and vice versa.
There's always hope... even when there isn't faith. And sometimes, without hope or faith, there must be charity.
That's one of those questions, whether human beings are really capable of change, or if all seeming changes are really a matter of framing the existing character in a different moral situation.
Very bad thing, killing little boy. But maybe Red man knows about whisky-Red, very thirsty, making crazy. Not like killing man to take his house or his woman or his land, like White man all the time.
That’s how it goes within a family. You think you know each other so well, and so you don’t bother hardly getting to know each other at all.
Heroes and victims are the product of the mood they were in when opportunity came or when circumstances were at their worst.
“Are you all right, sir?” asked Hezekiah.
“Just fighting over old battles in my mind,” said John. “It’s the problem with age. You have all these rusty arguments, and no quarrel to use them in. My brain is a museum, but alas, I’m the only visitor, and even I am not terribly interested in the displays.”
That’s the way it was then, you see. Folks noticed other people's trouble every bit as quick as if it was their own.
Just because you know I had no other choice doesn't make the anger go away. I understand that. But you're a man now. You can put away these childish things.
“What kind of stupid tale is that, when we just have to look at each other to know it isn’t true?”
“It has problems, I admit.”
She going to be free now. She can go home to Jesus.
Call me selfish, but I wanted her to go home with me.
She grunted. “Nothing unusual?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, if you ask me, that’s pretty unusual right there, if a body was smart enough to notice it.”
What I am seeing right now is a man who is so dominated by his mother that he is willing to throw away his marriage in order to protect her from the trauma of growing up and acting like an adult.
This is serious, and you gotta keep your mind open in case an idea comes along—you want there to be some room for it to fit in.
“Don’t talk to me like you understand my sins.”
“Don’t talk to me like you know what I do and do not understand.”
Alvin chuckled grimly. “Oh, that mouth you’ve got.”
“You can’t answer what I said, so you’re going to talk about my saying it.”