Orson Scott Card
American author working in numerous genres.
I was born with more power inside myself than I ever dreamed. But along with it there came no more sense than any other idiotic kid. Somewhere along in here I need to grow up into a man I can stand to live with. A man who doesn't just survive, but deserves to.
You always do that. Make all the questions harder.
I make them truer.
Keep your freedom, keep your immortality, but somewhere along the line I hope you figure out what you're living forever for. What noble purpose you mean to achieve. Because you're no good to anyone here, not even yourselves.
I acted like a human male. When I act like a human male it doesn't make me less human, it just makes me less female.
She sounded how you'd expect talking to a tree to sound - bored out of her mind.
You take responsibility for us all. Without ever waiting to be told.
So do all good people. That's what it means to be a good person.
Living with a god is not what it's cracked up to be. They think their women should be grateful just to have them around.
“You must be a prophet right enough,” said Alvin Junior, “cause I can’t understand a thing you said.”
I took the leap, yes, but I didn't like the ledge where I landed — I fought the bear, I kissed the princess, but now I don't want to be king. Well, where in the fairy tales did it ever say Cinderella had to like being queen?
Honesty always sounds like impudence to the vain and stupid.
You're the sort of enemy your enemy must love.
Alvin wondered if it was true—if all men had evil in their hearts, and those men as were good, maybe they were simply the ones who controlled theirselves so well they could act contrary to their heart’s desire. But if that were so, then no man was good, not one.
I've seen Australia and I've lived on an asteroid and I'd take the asteroid.
I believe in everything that seems true to me right now. I just refuse to be surprised when some of those things I believe in now turn out to be false later.
“I knew God had heard my prayer when I learned that it was you and no other who drew this case.”
“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?”
She did not send for him until she was afraid; she was not afraid until he undid her work; he did not undo her work until he was past loving her.
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.
How strange it was that this other woman, this girl-child, should speak of her son so possessively, should speak of his future as if it were her own future.
They gave me powers of thought and memory far beyond anything natural evolution would have given me, but that doesn't give them the right to decide the meaning of my life as if I were some dream. I decide the meaning. If my life is a dream then it's my dream, I'm the dreamer.
You looked so intense. Whatever you were saying, you seemed to mean it, and it wasn't amusing at all. Started quite a fashion. People keep looking for purpose now. Complicates everything.