1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. Orson Scott Card

Orson Scott Card Quotes
page 11

Orson Scott Card is an American novelist, critic, public speaker, essayist, and columnist. He writes in several genres but is known best for science fiction. His novel Ender's Game and its sequel Speaker for the Dead both won Hugo and Nebula Awards, making Card the only author to win both science fiction's top U.S. prizes in consecutive years. A feature film adaptation of Ender's Game, which Card co-produced, was released in late October 2013 in Europe and on November 1, 2013, in North America.

Card is a professor of English at Southern Virginia University, has written two books on creative writing, hosts writing bootcamps and workshops, and serves as a judge in the Writers of the Future contest. A great-great-grandson of Brigham Young, Card is a practicing member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints . In addition to producing a large body of fiction works, he has also offered political, religious, and social commentary in his columns and other writing.

He has written under a number of pseudonyms, including Frederick Bliss, Brian Green, P.Q. Gump, Dinah Kirkham, Scott Richards, and Byron Walley.

✵ 24. August 1951
Orson Scott Card photo
Orson Scott Card: 586 quotes16 likes

Orson Scott Card Quotes

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

Orson Scott Card

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

“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?”

Orson Scott Card book Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus

Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus (1996)

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

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Seventh Son (1987), Chapter 11.

“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.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Prentice Alvin (1989), Chapter 15.

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

Orson Scott Card

Treason (1988)

“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.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, The Memory Of Earth (1992)

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

Orson Scott Card book Lovelock

Lovelock (1994)

“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.”

Orson Scott Card book Homebody

Homebody (1998)

“How short life is for fools.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, The Crystal City (2003), Chapter 8 “Plans” (p. 159).

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

Orson Scott Card book Homebody

Homebody (1998)

“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.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, The Call Of Earth (1992)

“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.”

Orson Scott Card book Homebody

Homebody (1998)

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

Orson Scott Card

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

“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.”

Orson Scott Card

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

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

Orson Scott Card book Lovelock

Lovelock (1994)

“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.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Prentice Alvin (1989), Chapter 15.

“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?”

Orson Scott Card Enchantment

Enchantment (1999)

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

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Seventh Son (1987), Chapter 13.

“Verily learned to live with constant deception, hiding what he was and what he saw and what he felt and what he did from everyone around him. It was only natural that he should be drawn to the study of law.”

Orson Scott Card

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

“Knowing something may be a terrible burden to bear, but it holds no danger to them as aren’t afraid of truth.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, The Crystal City (2003), Chapter 4 “La Tia” (p. 72).

“Maybe he's growing up.
Or maybe he just needed the right circumstances to discover the best in himself.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, The Ships Of Earth (1994)

“I was born with more power inside myself than I ever dreamed. But along with it there came no more sense than any other idiotic kid. Somewhere along in here I need to grow up into a man I can stand to live with. A man who doesn't just survive, but deserves to.”

Orson Scott Card book The Lost Gate

The Lost Gate (2010)

“"And you actually were cuddly," said Carn. "No offense, but you were spunky."
"If that's your word for 'bratty little asshole,' said Dink mildly.”

Orson Scott Card Ender's Game hexalogy

Ender's Game series, Shadow of the Giant (2005)

“My own feeling is that human happiness is a very random thing, and bestows itself willy-nilly, and there’s not much deserving about the matter.”

Orson Scott Card

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

“I had seen the princess and let her lie there unawakened, because the happily ever after was so damnably much work.”

Orson Scott Card

"A Sepulchre of Songs," from The Changed Man (April 1992), ISBN 0-812-53365-8, page 125.

“My hands are clean, but not because I wasn't prepared to bloody them.”

Orson Scott Card Ender's Game hexalogy

Han Tzu aka Hot Soup
Ender's Game series, Shadow of the Giant (2005)

“What is this thing between women, like men are a joke that women all told each other long ago but men never get it.”

Orson Scott Card Treasure Box

Treasure Box (1996)

“The funny thing was, you see, that Mike Fink didn't think of himself as a murderer. He thought of life as a contest, and dying was what happened to those who came out second best, but it wasn't the same as murder, it was a fair fight.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Red Prophet (1988), Chapter 14.

“Asking a man if he could be trusted was like asking an unwed girl if she was a virgin. The question mattered, but the asking of it was a gross insult.”

Orson Scott Card Hart's Hope

Hart's Hope (1983)

“They gave me powers of thought and memory far beyond anything natural evolution would have given me, but that doesn't give them the right to decide the meaning of my life as if I were some dream. I decide the meaning. If my life is a dream then it's my dream, I'm the dreamer.”

Orson Scott Card book Lovelock

Lovelock (1994)

“He could afford to be generous, since he didn’t have to pay for it himself. Most virtues were like that. People could take pride in how virtuous they were, but the fact was that as soon as virtue got expensive or inconvenient, it was amazing how fast it gave way to practical concerns.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995), Chapter 5.

“Just because the only way you can maintain control over your bodily passions is to sit straight in your chair, knees together, hands delicately arranged in our lap, fingers tightly intertwined, does not mean that I am required to do the same.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Seventh Son (1987), Chapter 13.

“You always do that. Make all the questions harder.
I make them truer.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, Earthborn (1995)

““Are all Polish men as arrogant and intrusive and rude as you?”
“Few measure up to my standards, but most try.””

Orson Scott Card Ender's Game hexalogy

Page 97-98
Ender's Game series, First Meetings in the Enderverse (2003), Teacher's Pest

“You always back off at the exact moment when you're about to tell the other person exactly what she needs to hear.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, The Ships Of Earth (1994)

“I will love you forever, he thought. I am lying, he thought, and this time he was right.”

Orson Scott Card Songmaster

Songmaster (1979)

“Around here, ma’am, if folks got they mouth open, if they ain’t eating then they lying.”

Orson Scott Card

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

“It was his father who had shrunk, who no longer had the power of the giant, of the god, to enfold him and keep him safe.”

Orson Scott Card Enchantment

Enchantment (1999)

“You as stupid as they come. Of course, I say this with your best interests at heart. Most people are stupid. I don't hold it against them.”

Orson Scott Card book Homebody

Homebody (1998)

“People's beliefs don't exist in isolation. Everyone's firmly held beliefs exert an enormous pressure on everyone else.”

Orson Scott Card

Treason (1988)

“Once you have the gallows, you’ll find new reasons to hang people from it.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 7.

““Don’t talk to me like you understand my sins.”
“Don’t talk to me like you know what I do and do not understand.”
Alvin chuckled grimly. “Oh, that mouth you’ve got.”
“You can’t answer what I said, so you’re going to talk about my saying it.””

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, The Crystal City (2003), Chapter 4 “La Tia” (p. 74).

“What a silly god, he makes everybody born bad to go to burning hell. Why so mad? All his fault!”

Orson Scott Card

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

“Land was what they wanted, as if the mere ownership of dirt could turn a peasant into a squire.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Seventh Son (1987), Chapter 6.

“The Lord took twice the time making thee, Alvin Smith, cause it took that long to put the mischief in.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 1.

“I don’t have to be a gentleman,” said Balzac. “I am an artist.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 6.

“She can’t help her red skin, and she isn’t heathen. In fact, she’s a Baptist, which is almost like being Christian, only louder.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Red Prophet (1988), Chapter 3.