Orson Scott Card
American author working in numerous genres.
To face death, that's nothing much. But to feel really stupid when you die, well, that would be insufferable.
What cannot be healed has been healed. What was lost forever has been found. Therefore let that which cannot be forgiven be forgiven.
What is the White man? What does he do?
The White man is like a human being, but he crushes all other living things under his feet.
Then why, O Ta-Kumsaw, when I look into your heart, why is it that you do not wish to hurt the White man, that you do not wish to kill the White man?
The White man doesn’t know the evil that he does. The White man doesn’t feel the peace of the land, so how can he tell the little deaths he makes? I can’t blame the White man. But I can’t let him stay. So when I make him leave this land, I won’t hate him.
“I don’t hold with prophets,” said Alvin. “Near as I can tell, they end up just as dead as the next man.”
The fear of death in the one place was not as strong as another kind of fear, the fear of a world gone crazy, a place where anything could happen, where nothing could be trusted, where nothing was certain. A terrible place.
If there's no place in the universe for a man to resist the thieves of freedom and still be called a good man, then I don't think there is any good or evil in the universe.
“Calvin, what kind of trouble are you planning to make?”
“No trouble at all,” said Calvin, annoyed. “Why do you think I want to cause trouble?”
“Because you are awake.”
“You're such a liar.”
“But I’m a beautiful liar, don’t you think?” She flashed her best smile at her friend.
“I don’t understand what men see in women anyway,” her friend answered. “Hexes or no hexes, as long as a woman has her clothes on a man can’t see what he’s interested in anyhow.”
“I’m a terrible salesman,” he finally said. “I always tell the truth about what I’m selling, and then nobody buys it.”
No, no, no, Hooch told himself silently. Getting even don’t amount to nothing in this world. Getting even only gets you behind. The best revenge is to get rich enough to make them all call you sir, that’s how you get even with these boys.
The most evil creatures don’t desire the destruction of everything—they only desire to exploit it for themselves.
"I think that I say those things that make people so angry, not because I really mean them, but because I simply thought of a clever way to say them. It's a kind of art, to think of the perfect way to say an idea, and when you think of it then you have to say it, because words don't exist until you say them."
"A pretty feeble kind of art, Nyef, and I say you should give it up before it gets you killed."
And I says back to him, “Calvin, sounding like an educated man don’t make you educated,” and he says back to me, “I'd rather be ignorant and sound educated than be educated and sound ignorant,” and I said, “Why?” and he says to me, “Because if you sound educated then nobody ever tests you to find out, but if you sound ignorant they never stop.”
It never occurred to you that they might be flattering you, because you don't lie.
Denmark nursed that anger and it kept him free.
In a way, he lost some of himself, some of his knack, and therefore some of the choices he might have had in life. But in losing those, he gained so much more freedom, so much more power, that he was clear winner in the bargain.
Haven't you ever seen a 3-year-old when he makes a foolish blunder? He looks at whatever child or adult is nearby and screams at him "Look at what you made me do!" That's the moral universe that [they] always lived in.
Love can't conquer anything. Love can't make a scholar into a warrior. Loving her can't make her love me.
It was not love at all, really, but rather a yearning for the honor and respect of the other men that held them. Pride, then... Indeed, all their connection with each other at this moment was tied up with the respect they felt they were earning by their actions.
A dagger has only a single point, but a traitor cuts from anywhere.