Orson Scott Card: Trending quotes (page 14)

“When both parties are lying and they both know the other party's lying, it comes powerful close to being the same thing as telling the truth.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Red Prophet (1988), Chapter 1.

Truth , Lying

“That is the ultimate power, to stare death in the face and be unafraid.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, The Crystal City (2003), Chapter 11 “Flood” (p. 214).

Death

“I don’t hold with prophets,” said Alvin. “Near as I can tell, they end up just as dead as the next man.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Seventh Son (1987), Chapter 10.

Dead

“There must be a special place in hell reserved for you.
I've been to hell. It's a better place than this.”

Orson Scott Card

Treason (1988)

Hell

“[He] wasn't interested in meeting the kind of women who would come to one of those places looking for the kind of man who hoped to meet a woman there.”

Orson Scott Card Treasure Box

Treasure Box (1996)

Women , Hope

“You can’t change what you don’t understand.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Prentice Alvin (1989), Chapter 17.

Understanding , Change

“Just because you know I had no other choice doesn't make the anger go away. I understand that. But you're a man now. You can put away these childish things.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, Earthborn (1995)

Understanding , Anger

“Love can't conquer anything. Love can't make a scholar into a warrior. Loving her can't make her love me.”

Orson Scott Card Enchantment

Enchantment (1999)

Love

“When people say perhaps it’s cause they’re lying. Either they don’t believe the thing they’re saying, or they do believe it only they don’t want to admit they do.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995), Chapter 3.

People , Lying

“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.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, Earthfall (1995)

Universe

“By the time Verily was sixteen, a sturdy and rather good-looking young man of some education and impeccable manners, he had become a thoroughgoing skeptic. If the dogmas about witchery could be so hopelessly wrong, how could any of the teachings of the ministers be relied upon? It left Verily Cooper at loose ends, intellectually speaking, for all his teachers spoke as if religion were the cornerstone of all other learning, and yet all of Verily’s actual studies led him to the conclusion that sciences founded upon religion were uncertain at best, utterly bogus at worst.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995), Chapter 9.

Education , Religion , Study , Learning

“As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Seventh Son (1987), Chapter 9.

Joy

“I interpreted all you did as weakness — but I should have known that it was wisdom and strength, freely shared with all of us, even the ones who don't deserve it.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, The Ships Of Earth (1994)

Wisdom

“And he wanted a wife. He wanted to raise children. He wanted to prove that goodness wasn’t beaten into children, that fear was not the fount from which virtue flowed. He wanted to be able to gather his family in his arms and know that not one of them dreaded the sight of him, or felt the need to lie to him in order to have his love.”

Orson Scott Card

(Chapter reference needed).
The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995)

Love , Children , Lie , Fear

““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.””

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, The Crystal City (2003), Chapter 16 “Labor” (p. 307).

Fear , Dead

“Are you the strongest of all men, so strong that you can be merciful to me, a weak woman? Here is the undoing of your strength: I am not a weak woman. I am not a little queen. And your mercy will be your undoing.”

Orson Scott Card Hart's Hope

Hart's Hope (1983)

Men , Strong

“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.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995), Chapter 13.

“Don't lie to me! Don't seem so normal when I know you have cut yourself off from me in your heart! If you can put on our affectionate closeness like a mask, then I'll never be able to take joy in it again.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, Earthfall (1995)

Lie , Heart , Joy

“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.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Prentice Alvin (1989), Chapter 1.

Money , Way , Soul , Despair

“You just refuse to leave them alone until they change their minds. Of their own free will.”

Orson Scott Card book Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus

Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus (1996)

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