Orson Scott Card: Trending quotes (page 27)

“I always tell what I believe. Whether it's true, I'm no more sure than any man.”

“What sort of arrogance did she have, even to imagine reaching back into the past and making changes? Who am I, she thought, if I dare to answer prayers intended for the gods?”

“A duel is just two murderers who agree to take turns trying to kill each other.”

“I've learned much, Father, and this above all: that no station in life is above any other, if it’s occupied by someone with a good heart.”

“I'm losing Savanna.
That's good. No one should own someone else.”

“Faithfulness had taken me by surprise. I wondered how long the phase would last.”

“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.”

“Adolescents never understand that the best way to avoid notice is to behave normally.”

“I've known some bad people and some good people in my life, and it's the bad ones who live in fear, all the time. Cause they know their own hearts… And they think everyone else is just waiting to pull the same moves on them that they've got planned to pull on somebody else.”

“How short life is for fools.”

“He was wild the way a mistreated dog becomes wild, not because it loves freedom, but because it has lost trust.”

“Stop threatening me… I've lived in terror and I've come out of it. Kill me or not, torture me or not, it doesn't matter to me. Just decide what to do.”

“Good people can't out-think evil, 'cause evil think of things good folks can't think of. Can't enter your head what evil do.”

“Peggy chose her words to be true, and therefore beautiful, and therefore good.”

“You speak metaphorically, I hope,” said Peggy.
“I hope not,” said Becca. “Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.”

“We were all victims of an oppressive system, but that mattered far less to us than our deep bonding with our owners.”

“Perhaps you don’t desire poetry as much as you would like to have my torchy knowledge of your possible futures, but I dare say poetry will do you far more good. For knowing the future only makes you timid and complacent by turns, while poetry can shape you into the kind of souls who can face any future with boldness and wisdom and nobility, so that you need not know the future at all, so that any future will be an opportunity for greatness, if you have greatness in you.”

“Was his very boyishness the reason he was chosen? In that case, was it not a virtue to be admired, and not a failing to be despised?”

“It is a weak man who blames his failures on the strength of others.”