Orson Scott Card
American author working in numerous genres.
“I don’t plan to die for any cause,” said Jim Bowie. “Nor any man, excepting only myself. I know that ain’t noble, but it prolongs my days, which is philosophy enough for me.”
Wishful thinking gives false gods to people who hunger for gods, but those who yearn for a world with no gods are no less likely to fall victim to their own wishful thinking.
He had left home to get away, not to go toward anything. There was no greater freedom than that.
Never mind that the story had turned out to be lies and foolishness—there was always folks stupid enough to say, “Where there’s smoke there’s fire,” when the saying should have been, “Where there’s scandalous lies there’s always malicious believers and spreaders-around, regardless of evidence.
Land was what they wanted, as if the mere ownership of dirt could turn a peasant into a squire.
What is this thing between women, like men are a joke that women all told each other long ago but men never get it.
I'm nobody's child.
You're mine now. Not my child, but mine, to miss you when you go, to look out for you, to hope you'll be careful.
Most of the things people say they remember they only imagine anyways.
It is a weak man who blames his failures on the strength of others.
Sometimes it felt to him as though he’s spent most of his life traveling, and never quite got to anywhere that mattered.
Then again, that might be as good a description of what life was supposed to be as anyone ever thought of. The only real destination was death, and our lives consisted of finding the most circuitous and pleasant path to get there.
[He] looked death in the eye and did not seem disappointed.
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.
“I see Alvin with a son. That what he want most.”
“I see him with a woman,” said Rien. “That is what he miss the most.”
“I see him kneeling by a child’s grave,” said Dead Mary. “That is what he fears the most.”
She had that irony in her eyes. Knowledge without wisdom. Power without purpose. Like me.
How is clean, painless nonexistence any worse than clean, painless death?
You resent death. You regret death. But as for your own life, you know perfectly well that no one can threaten it at all. Death is something that happens to someone else.
He didn’t know if he had the right or not. Didn’t know if he was taking like a Red man, just what the land offered, or stealing like a White man, murdering whatever it pleased him to kill.