Orson Scott Card
American author working in numerous genres.
“This is today’s puzzle,” he said. “If the act of denial can be taken as proof of the crime, how can an innocent man defend himself?”
The tithingmen caught him by the arms. “Come along now, Mr. Emerson, and don’t go trying any philosophy on us.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it,” said Waldo. “Philosophy would be wasted against such sturdy-headed men as you.”
“Glad you know it,” said the tithingman proudly. “Wouldn’t want you thinking we weren’t true Christians.”
Love is random; fear is inevitable.
You always back off at the exact moment when you're about to tell the other person exactly what she needs to hear.
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 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.
Knowing was better than not knowing. But not by much.
I believed all that stuff about pleasing myself. Can't be done. You can't please yourself by doing what you want. Because it doesn't mean anything if it's just you. There has to be somebody it matters to.
To expect wickedness from human beings is the best way I know of to avoid surprises. And when I am surprised, it’s always pleasantly.
Wasting our time? This is a waste of time, to live in peace and plenty with my wife and children? May I waste the rest of my life, then.
The White man never guessed at what the Red man saw and heard and felt. The White man brought death and emptiness to this place. The White man cut down wise old trees with much to tell; young saplings with many lifetimes of life ahead; and the White man never asked, Will you be glad to make a lodgehouse for me and my tribe? Hack and cut and chop and burn, that was the White man’s way. Take from the forest, take from the land, take from the river, but put nothing back. The White man killed animals he didn’t need, animals that did him no harm; yet if a bear woke hungry in the winter and took so much as a single young pig, the White man hunted him down and killed him in revenge. He never felt the balance of the land at all.
If he was a good man, how could he leave me? So he must not be a good man. But if he isn't good, then why does it hurt so much to lose him? Is it just my pride that's wounded?
God had answered her prayer, not with the thing she asked for, but rather the thing she wanted most in her heart.
I've learned much, Father, and this above all: that no station in life is above any other, if it’s occupied by someone with a good heart.
It just gripes me hollow, the way God always sneaks in to take the credit.
Before the story he refused to even think about it; after the story, it became conceivable to him, and, once he could conceive of it, it soon became inevitable.
They never noticed that he was in fact what they only pretended to be.
What does it matter if, by following my heart, I also fulfill someone else's plan?
They don't know how to watch things. They don't know how to see anything but what they expect to see.
To say what's in their hearts, regardless of shame. It doesn't change what they feel, what they want. It just helps... loosen them up.
“A man like that thinks that fear can win loyalty.”
“Plenty of masters with a lash who can testify it works.”
“Don’t win loyalty, just obedience, and only while the lash is in the room.”
Slavery, that was a kind of alchemy for such White folk, or so they reckoned. They calculated a way of turning each bead of a Black man’s sweat into gold and each moan of despair from a Black woman’s throat into the sweet clear sound of a silver coin ringing on the money-changer’s table. There was buying and selling of souls in that place. Yet there was nary a one of them who understood the whole price they paid for owning other folk.