Orson Scott Card: Trending quotes (page 19)

“If he was a good man, how could he leave me? So he must not be a good man. But if he isn't good, then why does it hurt so much to lose him? Is it just my pride that's wounded?”

“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.”

“When you have enough money the law is a reed that will always bend your way.”

“Even the devil gives some justice to his victims, when they're beyond all help.”

“Everybody thinks they want to see the truth,” said Tenkswa-Tawa. “That’s one of the lies we tell ourselves.”

“He knew her too well to see her from the distance that pity requires. He loved her because he admired her. For bearing without complaint the burden the queen put on her. For still being gentle and loving when she had ample reason to be bitter.”

“Maybe what we really want is for our children to be the dominant ones! Maybe I'm trying to see my own ambitions fulfilled in them, and that would be wrong, so I should be content with what they are.”

“That reminded John Paul of what Andrew had said when he was teaching him to play chess. “You have to think ahead, the next move, the next move, the next move, to see where it’s all going to lead.” John Paul understood the principle as soon as Andrew explained it. But he stopped playing chess anyway, because he didn’t care what happened to little plastic figures on a board of sixty-four squares.”

“To expect wickedness from human beings is the best way I know of to avoid surprises. And when I am surprised, it’s always pleasantly.”

“You looked so intense. Whatever you were saying, you seemed to mean it, and it wasn't amusing at all. Started quite a fashion. People keep looking for purpose now. Complicates everything.”

“She did not send for him until she was afraid; she was not afraid until he undid her work; he did not undo her work until he was past loving her.”

“Living with a god is not what it's cracked up to be. They think their women should be grateful just to have them around.”

“Why is doubt the one thing we're never skeptical of? We question other peoples' beliefs, and the more sure they are the more we doubt them. But it never occurs to us to doubt our own doubt. Question our own questions. We think our questions are answers.”

“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?”

“More than likely, mother would simply go enigmatic on him, give him one of her inscrutable smiles, and tell him that if he didn't already understand, he never would.”

“Religion makes them crazy. Not a woman I ever met wasn’t crazy with religion.”

“She did love him, you know… It was a selfish, possessive love, but it was all she knew how to give.”

“Sunday morning, he decided, is designed to let sinners have a sample of the first day of eternity in hell.”

“The woman is the subtlest beast in the garden,” said Papa Moose, “now that snakes can’t talk.”