Orson Scott Card
American author working in numerous genres.
You can’t change what you don’t understand.
The funny thing was, you see, that Mike Fink didn't think of himself as a murderer. He thought of life as a contest, and dying was what happened to those who came out second best, but it wasn't the same as murder, it was a fair fight.
Which is the greater wrong? To hurt the unforgiving one, or hurt the one who has forgiven all?
Just because the only way you can maintain control over your bodily passions is to sit straight in your chair, knees together, hands delicately arranged in our lap, fingers tightly intertwined, does not mean that I am required to do the same.
My hands are clean, but not because I wasn't prepared to bloody them.
What the White man had won with so much blood and dishonesty was not the living land of the Red man, but the corpse of that land. It was decay that the White man won. It would turn to dust in his hands, Alvin knew it.
Having never been in control of his own life, his idea of freedom was simply to break free.
I don't know you, ma'am, and apparently I'm expected to die for you.
That's what survival means, for me. I thought it was a matter of staying alive, but it isn't. Nobody lives forever anyway. It's how you're remembered. It's what your children thought of you, what they think of you after you're dead. That's survival.
Coincidence is just the word we use when we have not yet discovered the cause.
Sometimes those who care for the whole community must act in a way that harms the individual. For a good man it never becomes easy and he avoids it when he can; but when people need him to be harsh, he will be harsh indeed, and he won't shrink from it, he'll do it with his own hand and let it be known what he does.
A duel is just two murderers who agree to take turns trying to kill each other.
“You speak metaphorically, I hope,” said Peggy.
“I hope not,” said Becca. “Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.”
The billion billion paths of his life lay open before him, waiting for his first choices, for the first changes in the world around him to eliminate a million futures every second.
My father always said that government is like watching another man piss in your boot. Someone feels better but it certainly isn’t you.
They won't be required to sacrifice anything in order to belong to your assembly. A religion that is all sweetness, but no light; all form, but no substance; all tradition, but no precept.
As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.
May the day when you need courage never come.
Even as she said it, though, she knew the day would come.
We don't admit it to ourselves, not until the very moment of death, but in that moment, we see all life before us and we understand how we chose, every day of our lives, the manner of our death.
There was the chance that someday he would surprise her, that she would turn to face her husband and find a stranger in his place, a stranger who didn't approve of her and didn't want her in his life anymore.