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Orson Scott Card Quotes
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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   quotes 13   likes

Orson Scott Card Quotes

“I wanted your songs.
You wanted my songs more than you wanted my happiness. So you took my happiness, and stole my songs.”

Orson Scott Card Songmaster

Songmaster (1979)

Happiness

“We're not a family. We're the opposite of a family. We're people so lonely that when we're together we make a black hole of loneliness and everything else gets sucked down into it and is never seen again.”

Orson Scott Card book Homebody

Homebody (1998)

People , Family , Loneliness

“I'm accusing you of violating the laws of nature," he said, irritated at my failure to respond.
"Nature's virtue is intact," I reassured him. "I just know some different laws.”

Orson Scott Card

Dialog between Lord Barton and Lanik Mueller, after the latter performs a series of apparent miracles
[A Planet Called Treason, 1979, 1st Dell printing, 1980, July, Dell Publishing, New York, ISBN 0-440-16897-X, p. 240 of 299]

Law , Failure , Nature

“Even in cultures where marriages are arranged by parents, you’re never actually forbidden to fall in love with your mate.”

Orson Scott Card Ender's Game hexalogy

Page 100
Ender's Game series, First Meetings in the Enderverse (2003), Teacher's Pest

Love , Marriage , Parent

“I don't know a soul who doesn't maintain two separate lists of doctrines — the ones that they believe that they believe; and the ones that they actually try to live by.”

Orson Scott Card Ender's Game hexalogy

Spoken by Sister Carlotta.
Ender's Game series, Shadow of the Hegemon (2001)

Soul

“I'm nobody's child.
You're mine now. Not my child, but mine, to miss you when you go, to look out for you, to hope you'll be careful.”

Orson Scott Card book Homebody

Homebody (1998)

Hope

“Keep me alive. Keep me alive long enough for me to conquer the animal within myself. Long enough for me to learn to partner myself with a woman who is better and stronger than me. Long enough for me to reconcile myself with my brothers. Long enough to be as good a man as my father, and as good as my mother, too.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, The Call Of Earth (1992)

Learning , Animals

“Wouldn't it have been better to change humanity so it no longer desired to destroy itself?”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, The Memory Of Earth (1992)

Change

“Like running hurdles. Work so hard, jump over every one, fast, high enough but no higher, because you can't afford to hang in the air. And then, when the race is over, you're dripping with sweat, either they beat you or you beat them… and then a couple of guys come out and move the hurdles out of the way. Turns out they were nothing. All that work to jump over them, but now they're gone.”

Orson Scott Card Enchantment

Enchantment (1999)

Way , Guy

“You aren't the kind of guy who takes the law into his own hands. You left the law in other hands and it screwed you over pretty badly.”

Orson Scott Card book Homebody

Homebody (1998)

Law , Guy

“Home is where the people who live there need me to come home to them, and worry about me when I'm gone. There's no such place on this earth, no matter how far I drive.”

Orson Scott Card Treasure Box

Treasure Box (1996)

People , Home

“This is serious, and you gotta keep your mind open in case an idea comes along—you want there to be some room for it to fit in.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, The Crystal City (2003), Chapter 5 “Crystal Ball” (p. 98).

Idea

“Self-knowledge can be painful, but not half so damaging as self-ignorance.”

Orson Scott Card book Stone Tables

Stone Tables (1997)

Pain , Knowledge

“Never mind that the story had turned out to be lies and foolishness—there was always folks stupid enough to say, “Where there’s smoke there’s fire,” when the saying should have been, “Where there’s scandalous lies there’s always malicious believers and spreaders-around, regardless of evidence.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995), Chapter 17.

Stupidity

“Sometimes those who care for the whole community must act in a way that harms the individual. For a good man it never becomes easy and he avoids it when he can; but when people need him to be harsh, he will be harsh indeed, and he won't shrink from it, he'll do it with his own hand and let it be known what he does.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, Earthfall (1995)

People , Way , Communication

“You must be a prophet right enough,” said Alvin Junior, “cause I can’t understand a thing you said.”

Orson Scott Card

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

Understanding

“No man can bear to live with a woman who speaks nothing but the truth to him.”

Orson Scott Card book Stone Tables

Stone Tables (1997)

Truth

“How could you disguise your own thoughts so even you didn't know what you were thinking?”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, The Memory Of Earth (1992)

Thinking

“He had left home to get away, not to go toward anything. There was no greater freedom than that.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995), Chapter 8.

Home , Freedom

“Marriage is about banality. Its purpose is banality, to create an environment of surpassing safety and predictability for young children to grow up in, the foundation of life, the root of inner peace.”

Orson Scott Card Enchantment

Enchantment (1999)

Life , Marriage , Children , Peace

“In the absence of understanding, that was a good a reason as any for living together and making babies and raising them up and throwing them out of the house and then going through the long slow decline together until one of them died and left the other alone again, understanding as little as ever about what their spouses really wanted, who they really were. Was that tragedy? Or was that comedy? Was there really any difference?”

Orson Scott Card Enchantment

Enchantment (1999)

Understanding , Baby , Housing

“The first of a thousand lies. Truth flowed to Micah Quill, was sucked in and disappeared, and emerged again looking ever so much like it used to, but changed subtly, at the edges, where none would notice, so that simple truth became a complicated fabric indeed, one that could wrap you up so tightly and close you off from the air until you suffocated in it.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 9.

Truth , Change

“It was always from the love of strong women that he had found whatever joy had been granted him in his life.”

Orson Scott Card book Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus

Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus (1996)

Love , Life , Women , Strong

“Like all children they only wanted to be known, and cared little about giving that gift to others.”

Orson Scott Card book Stone Tables

Stone Tables (1997)

Children

“To face death, that's nothing much. But to feel really stupid when you die, well, that would be insufferable.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, The Ships Of Earth (1994)

Death , Stupidity , Feeling

“He hated the way they thought. He hated the way they didn't think. It was hard to imagine which of them he hated more.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, Earthfall (1995)

Hate , Way , Imagination , Thinking

“There was the chance that someday he would surprise her, that she would turn to face her husband and find a stranger in his place, a stranger who didn't approve of her and didn't want her in his life anymore.”

Orson Scott Card book Lost Boys

Lost Boys (1992)

Life , Chance

“That’s the way it was then, you see. Folks noticed other people's trouble every bit as quick as if it was their own.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Seventh Son (1987), Chapter 3.

People , Way

“I never had you, not since you escaped from the womb.”

Orson Scott Card Enchantment

Enchantment (1999)

“But whether there's some grand design really matters little to me. My only hope was this: to see what might be, to believe that it should be, and then to do all I could to bring it to pass, whatever the cost.”

Orson Scott Card

Treason (1988)

Hope

“Taleswapper looked at Miller.
“I'm nothing,” he said.
“A Christian isn’t nothing,” said Taleswapper.
“I'm no Christian, either.”
“Ah,” said Taleswapper. “A Deist, then, like Tom Jefferson.” The children murmured at his mention of the great man’s name.
“Taleswapper, I'm a father who loves his children, a husband who loves his wife, a farmer who pays his debts, and a miller without a millstone.””

Orson Scott Card

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

Love , Children

“Permanence was always an illusion, and love was just the disguise that lovers wore to hide the death of their union from each other for a while.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, The Memory Of Earth (1992)

Love , Death , Lovers

“And I says back to him, “Calvin, sounding like an educated man don’t make you educated,” and he says back to me, “I'd rather be ignorant and sound educated than be educated and sound ignorant,” and I said, “Why?” and he says to me, “Because if you sound educated then nobody ever tests you to find out, but if you sound ignorant they never stop.””

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995), Chapter 1.

Education

“The desire to force others to bend or break to her will was always there, usually hidden deeply enough that she could forget she had that wish within her, but occasionally surfacing to dangle the ripe fruit of power just out of her reach. She knew, as few others did, that the power to coerce depended entirely on the fear or weakness of other human beings. It was possible to use coercion, yes, but in the end you found yourself surrounded only by the weak and fearful, with all those of courage and strength arrayed against you.”

Orson Scott Card

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

Fear , Courage , Dependency , Forgetting

““Hey, you’re getting to be almost worth how much it costs to feed you.”
“Good thing, ’cause I got no plan to eat less.””

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, The Crystal City (2003), Chapter 3 “Fever” (p. 48).

“At night in his own bed, Alvin listened to the distant greensong, still warm and beautiful, still bright and hopeful even though the forest was getting so sparse, even though the future was so dim. Cause there’s no fear of future in the song of life, just the ever-joyful present moment. That’s all I want right now, thought Alvin. The present moment, which is good enough.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Red Prophet (1988), Chapter 19 (closing words).

Life , Fear , Beauty , Hope

“Wasting our time? This is a waste of time, to live in peace and plenty with my wife and children? May I waste the rest of my life, then.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, The Ships Of Earth (1994)

Life , Children , Peace , Time

“I have no way of knowing that your story is not true — but you have no way of knowing that my story isn't true. So I will choose the one that I love. I will close the one that, if it's true, makes this reality one worth living in. I'll act as if the life I hope for is real life, and the life that disgusts me — your life, your view of life — is the lie.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, The Call Of Earth (1992)

Love , Life , Lie , Hope

““Did they program brattiness into you?”
“That’s a trait I developed for myself,” she said. “Do you like it?””

Orson Scott Card Ender's Game hexalogy

Page 202
Ender's Game series, First Meetings in the Enderverse (2003), Investment Counselor

“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?”

Orson Scott Card Enchantment

Enchantment (1999)

Hurt

“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.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, The Call Of Earth (1992)

Love , Men

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

Orson Scott Card Treasure Box

Treasure Box (1996)

Money , Law , Way

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

Orson Scott Card

Treason (1988)

Justice , Help

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

Orson Scott Card

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

Truth , Thinking

“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.”

Orson Scott Card Hart's Hope

Hart's Hope (1983)

Love

“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.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, The Ships Of Earth (1994)

Children

“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.”

Orson Scott Card Ender's Game hexalogy

Page 53
Ender's Game series, First Meetings in the Enderverse (2003), The Polish Boy

Thinking

“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.”

Orson Scott Card

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

Way

“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.”

Orson Scott Card

Treason (1988)

People , Fashion