Orson Scott Card
American author working in numerous genres.
He deserved to die except that nothing deserves death.
Not that human beings need to be violent in order to be human, but if you ever lose the will to control, the will to destroy, then it must be because you choose to lose it. My role was not to force you to be gentle and kind; it was to keep you alive while you decided for yourselves what kind of people you wanted to be.
Here's my throat. I carry no weapon. You could have killed me at any time, even when I knew you were my enemy. Why did you need to deceive me into trusting you first? Were you afraid that death wouldn't bother me enough, unless I felt betrayed?
Many a man isn't as good as his woman, but I never knew a husband who was better than his wife.
You think this because you are a nasty person by nature, Calvin, and you don’t understand nice people. To you, the end of existence is to control things, and so you will never build anything, but rather will try to take control of what is already in existence. Your brother, though, is by nature a Maker, as you explain it; therefore he cares nothing about who rules, but only about what exists.
Was it worth it? To lose part of who he had been in order to live free? Perhaps this new self was better than the old.
“I have no fear of war,” said Arthur Stuart. “That’s when kings get to show their mettle.”
“You’re thinking of chess,” said Margaret. “In war, everyone has their chance to bleed.”
Home is where the people who live there need me to come home to them, and worry about me when I'm gone. There's no such place on this earth, no matter how far I drive.
Maybe if I could bear my life as it is for one day, for one hour, for one minute, I could forget my wish to be something else.
When I am drunk I am at my best. It is the national knack of the French.
What you are is a man who means to be good, and undo the bad he’s done, and that’s as good as any man ever gets.
Where do you draw the line between a humble man who knows his own weaknesses but tries to act out virtues he hasn’t quite mastered yet, and a proud man who pretends to have those virtues without the slightest intention of acquiring them?
Marriage is about banality. Its purpose is banality, to create an environment of surpassing safety and predictability for young children to grow up in, the foundation of life, the root of inner peace.
Some men are great enough that they can love a whole woman, and not just part of her.
All children are manipulators.
Maybe he's growing up.
Or maybe he just needed the right circumstances to discover the best in himself.
At night in his own bed, Alvin listened to the distant greensong, still warm and beautiful, still bright and hopeful even though the forest was getting so sparse, even though the future was so dim. Cause there’s no fear of future in the song of life, just the ever-joyful present moment. That’s all I want right now, thought Alvin. The present moment, which is good enough.
Perhaps I’m hiding from myself. Perhaps I don’t want to be what I’m supposed to be. Or perhaps I don’t want to keep living the life I already started to live.
Your father cares as little as we do. It's just that he tends to despair, while we are full of hope.
How short life is for fools.