Orson Scott Card: Trending quotes (page 26)

“I think if you left grownups to do what they really actually wanted most in the world to do, every single one of them would lie down and take a nap for the rest of their life. I know this because that's what every grownup does as soon as they're alone.”

Orson Scott Card book Lovelock

Lovelock (1994)

Life , Lie , World , Thinking

“Lolla-Wossiky is left like a White man then. Cut off from the land. Ground crunching underfoot. Branches snagging. Roots tripping. Animals running away.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Red Prophet (1988), Chapter 4.

Animals

“Justice could be cruel, and crueler yet necessity, but mercy was the cruelest thing of all.”

Orson Scott Card Hart's Hope

Hart's Hope (1983)

Justice

“Lookit that,” he said. “A lawyer who knows how to do something useful. That’s a miracle.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995), Chapter 12.

“You were born with compassion, only that also means that when people are cruel to you it cuts you deep. You won't understand that you have to walk right up to the ones who are being hateful and laugh in their faces and earn their respect. Instead you'll try to figure out what you did to make them mad at you.”

Orson Scott Card book Lost Boys

Lost Boys (1992)

Hate , People , Understanding , Madness

“The White man never guessed at what the Red man saw and heard and felt. The White man brought death and emptiness to this place. The White man cut down wise old trees with much to tell; young saplings with many lifetimes of life ahead; and the White man never asked, Will you be glad to make a lodgehouse for me and my tribe? Hack and cut and chop and burn, that was the White man’s way. Take from the forest, take from the land, take from the river, but put nothing back. The White man killed animals he didn’t need, animals that did him no harm; yet if a bear woke hungry in the winter and took so much as a single young pig, the White man hunted him down and killed him in revenge. He never felt the balance of the land at all.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Red Prophet (1988), Chapter 2.

Life , Death , Way , Revenge

“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.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Prentice Alvin (1989), Chapter 18.

Parting

“'A woman's wisdom is her gift to women,'" Peggy quoted. "'Her beauty is her gift to men. Her love is her gift to God.'”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Prentice Alvin (1989), Chapter 10.

Love , Wisdom , Women , Men

“I've done my best, but the boy is unteachable. He doubts everything, and contests each point of theology as if it were required to meet the same tests of logic and consistency that prevail in the world of science.”
“In other words, he expects your doctrines to make sense.”
“He is unwilling to accept the idea that some things remain mysteries, comprehensible only to the mind of God. Ambiguity makes him saucy, and paradox causes open rebellion.”

Orson Scott Card

“An obnoxious child.”
Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Seventh Son (1987), Chapter 13.

God , World , Boy , Idea

“You are sure your enemy is stupid because he doesn't do things as you would do them. It will make you careless, and your enemy will surprise you.”

Orson Scott Card book Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus

Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus (1996)

Stupidity

“Very bad thing, killing little boy. But maybe Red man knows about whisky-Red, very thirsty, making crazy. Not like killing man to take his house or his woman or his land, like White man all the time.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Red Prophet (1988), Chapter 4.

Boy , Time , Housing

“Denmark nursed that anger and it kept him free.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 10.

Anger

“It’s plain that if I married you for brains I was plumb cheated.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Seventh Son (1987), Chapter 7.

Cheating

“"Women's intuition" wasn't intuition at all, it was heightened observation, unconscious registration of subtle clues.”

Orson Scott Card Enchantment

Enchantment (1999)

Women

“The Maker is the one who is part of what he makes.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Prentice Alvin (1989), Chapter 9.

Parting

“Every terrible thing in the world was caused by a whole combination of things. But everybody wanted to narrow it down to one cause—and not even the real one. Much better to have one cause—one person to punish. Then the unbearable could be borne.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, The Crystal City (2003), Chapter 3 “Fever” (p. 56).

World , Personality

“I immediately felt so comfortable there. Or if not comfortable, at least willing to bear the discomforts because they fit the awkward places in my heart.”

Orson Scott Card

Treason (1988)

Heart

“Road poured out into a place of meadows and a few White man’s buildings. Lots of wagons. Horses posted and tied, grazing on the meadow grass. Sounds of metal hammers ringing, chopping of axes in the wood, screech of saws going back and forth, all kinds of White-man forest-killing sounds. A White man’s town.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Red Prophet (1988), Chapter 4.

Grass , Horse

“There were always people searching for the Unmaker, for some awful destructive power outside themselves. Poor fools, they always thought that Destruction was merely destruction, they were using it and when they were done with it, they’d set to building. But you don’t build on a foundation of destruction. That’s the dark secret of the Unmaker, Alvin thought. Once he sets you to tearing down, it’s hard to get back to building, hard to get your own self back. The digger wears out the ground and the spade. And once you let yourself be a tool in the Unmaker’s hand, he’ll wear you out, he’ll tear you down, he’ll dull you and hole you and all the time you’ll be thining you’re so sharp and fine and bright and whole, and you never go till he lets go of you, lets you drop and fall. What’s that clatter? Why, that was me. That was me, sounding like a wore-out tool. What you leaving me for? I still got use left in me?
But you don’t, not when the Unmaker’s got you.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995), Chapter 14.

People , Secret , Fools , Search

“War was never so careful as to inflict suffering only where it was merited.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 2.

War , Suffering