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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

“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.”

Orson Scott Card Hart's Hope

Hart's Hope (1983)

Love , Past

“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.”

Orson Scott Card Enchantment

Enchantment (1999)

Women , God , Thinking

“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.”

Orson Scott Card book Homebody

Homebody (1998)

People , Question , Thinking

“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?”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995), Chapter 2.

Drawing

“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.”

Orson Scott Card Enchantment

Enchantment (1999)

Smile , Understanding

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

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Seventh Son (1987), Chapter 12.

Religion

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

Orson Scott Card book Lovelock

Lovelock (1994)

Love , Selfishness

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

Orson Scott Card

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

Hell

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

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, The Crystal City (2003), Chapter 3 “Fever” (p. 41).

“He’s young,” she said.
“We’ve all been guilty of that sin,” said Alvin. “And some never get over it.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, The Crystal City (2003), Chapter 9 “Expeditions” (p. 175).

“I took the leap, yes, but I didn't like the ledge where I landed — I fought the bear, I kissed the princess, but now I don't want to be king. Well, where in the fairy tales did it ever say Cinderella had to like being queen?”

Orson Scott Card Enchantment

Enchantment (1999)

Kiss , Princess

“If something just plain didn’t make sense to Alvin, he didn’t believe it, and no amount of quoting from the Bible would convince him. Now Taleswapper was telling him that he was right to refuse to believe things that made no sense.”

Orson Scott Card

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

Quotes , Sense

“You are so intent that you believe only what you believe that you believe, that you remain utterly blind to what you really believe without believing that you believe it.”

Orson Scott Card Ender's Game hexalogy

Ender's Game series, Shadow of the Hegemon (2001)

“Such a darling child, they would say, and pat her head. And Miriam would answer in her heart: you made my father a slave. You want us all dead. You are the river, you and all of Egypt. You are the river and as long as we stay beside you we are in danger of drowning.”

Orson Scott Card book Stone Tables

Stone Tables (1997)

Heart , Dead

“I don't know why people who got what they need to be happy don’t just go ahead and be happy.”

Orson Scott Card

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

People , Happiness

“You resent death. You regret death. But as for your own life, you know perfectly well that no one can threaten it at all. Death is something that happens to someone else.”

Orson Scott Card

Treason (1988)

Life , Death

“Doesn't love show its face when it satisfies the need of the loved one, for the loved one's sake alone?”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, The Ships Of Earth (1994)

Love

“Don’t press her,” said Cooper. “If someone decides to leave something unsaid, my experience is that everyone is happier if they don’t insist on his saying it.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 5.

“You know, if you hurt people enough, eventually they’ll all call you whatever you want. Maker. King. Captain. Boss. Master. Holy One. Pick your title, you can beat people into calling you that. But you don’t change yourself a bit. All you do is change the meanings of those words, so they all mean the same thing: Bully.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995), Chapter 2.

People , Change , Hurt

“I had never believed I had a soul until then, when it laid bare a hurt more deep than any part of me could bear.”

Orson Scott Card

Treason (1988)

Soul , Parting , Hurt

“You're the sort of enemy your enemy must love.”

Orson Scott Card Hart's Hope

Hart's Hope (1983)

Love

““I want to know how many years I got.”
“Many,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “Or few. All that matters is what you do with however many years you have.””

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Red Prophet (1988), Chapter 17.

“How does he do it? How does he master people without bluster or bullying? How does he make people fear him or love him, not in spite of his ruthlessness but because of it?”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, The Call Of Earth (1992)

Love , People , Fear

“There are many steps on the continuum between controlling something and doing nothing at all.”

Orson Scott Card Ender's Game hexalogy

Page 57
Ender's Game series, First Meetings in the Enderverse (2003), The Polish Boy

“The man who has an intelligent child is doomed to spend his life justifying every decision he makes.”

Orson Scott Card book Stone Tables

Stone Tables (1997)

Life , Intelligence , Decision

“Debased men, but they all had something in common: They showed a keen regard for virtue, and tried to dress themselves in that costume. Hypocrisy, for all its bad reputation, at least showed a decent respect for goodness.”

Orson Scott Card

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

Men

“I've seen Australia and I've lived on an asteroid and I'd take the asteroid.”

Orson Scott Card Ender's Game hexalogy

Champi T'it'u aka Dumper
Ender's Game series, Shadow of the Giant (2005)

“How strange it was that this other woman, this girl-child, should speak of her son so possessively, should speak of his future as if it were her own future.”

Orson Scott Card Enchantment

Enchantment (1999)

Girl , Future

“First we try to preserve ourselves, until we see that we can't. Then we try to preserve our children, until we see we can't. Then we act to preserve our kin, and then our village or tribe, and when we see we can't preserve even them, then we act in order to preserve our memory. And if we can't do that, what is left?”

Orson Scott Card book Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus

Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus (1996)

Children , Memory

“I began to suspect that the ultimate sacrifice isn't death after all; the ultimate sacrifice is willingly bearing the fullest penalty for your own actions.”

Orson Scott Card

Treason (1988)

Death , Penalty

“I believed all that stuff about pleasing myself. Can't be done. You can't please yourself by doing what you want. Because it doesn't mean anything if it's just you. There has to be somebody it matters to.”

Orson Scott Card book Homebody

Homebody (1998)

“Heroes and victims are the product of the mood they were in when opportunity came or when circumstances were at their worst.”

Orson Scott Card

Treason (1988)

Mood

“Here's the secret that every successful software company is based on: You can domesticate programmers the way beekeepers tame bees. You can't exactly communicate with them, but you can get them to swarm in one place and when they're not looking, you can carry off the honey.”

Orson Scott Card

How Software Companies Die

Secret , Way , Communication , Bee

“Just because you believe it doesn’t make it so.”

Orson Scott Card

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

“Humans, in order to rise above the animals, had learned how to convert themselves into nothing more than organs or limbs or even disposable fingernails and hair of a larger metaphorical organism.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, Earthborn (1995)

Learning , Animals

“I think that I say those things that make people so angry, not because I really mean them, but because I simply thought of a clever way to say them. It's a kind of art, to think of the perfect way to say an idea, and when you think of it then you have to say it, because words don't exist until you say them."
"A pretty feeble kind of art, Nyef, and I say you should give it up before it gets you killed.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, The Memory Of Earth (1992)

People , Art , Way , Idea

“He exuded confidence without ever looking as is he wanted to make sure everyone else knew how confident he was.”

Orson Scott Card book Lost Boys

Lost Boys (1992)

Confidence

“We can wash people in the water all we want, but we can never wash their parents out of their hearts.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, Earthborn (1995)

People , Parent , Water , Heart

“The barrier was only in my mind — which is true of this barrier as well. The more firmly I try to cross the barrier, the more firmly I'm rejected. Well, maybe it's the intention to cross the boundary that pushes me away.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, The Ships Of Earth (1994)

“If I have to choose between an omnipotent God who leaves the world in this condition, and a God who has only a little bit of power but really cares and tries to make things better, I'll take you every time. Go on playing God, Hyrum. You're not bad at it. Sometimes you kind of get it right.”

Orson Scott Card Ender's Game hexalogy

Julian Delphiki, aka Bean.
Ender's Game series, Shadow of the Giant (2005)

God , World , Time

“I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration.”

Orson Scott Card book Future on Fire

Future on Fire (1991), introduction.

Motivation

“If it isn't a wonderful story first, who cares how "important" it is?”

Orson Scott Card book Future on Fire

Future on Fire (1991), introduction.

“The billion billion paths of his life lay open before him, waiting for his first choices, for the first changes in the world around him to eliminate a million futures every second.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Seventh Son (1987), Chapter 5.

Life , World , Change , Waiting

“I walked down the hill, forgot philosophy, and joined the human race again. Nobody was particularly glad to see me.”

Orson Scott Card

Treason (1988)

“What Alvin figured out was that when you’re Making, you don’t use people like tools. You don’t wear them out to achieve your purpose. You wear yourself out helping them achieve theirs. You wear yourself out teaching and guiding, persuading and listening to advice and letting folks persuade you, when it happens they’re right.”

Orson Scott Card

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

People , Help

“"'Waterloo was won,'" quoted Rackham, "'on the playing fields of Eton.'"
"What the hell does that mean?" asked Carn Carby. "You never even went to Eton."
"It was an analogy," said Rackham. "If you hadn't spent your entire childhood playing war games, you'd actually know something. You're all so uneducated."”

Orson Scott Card Ender's Game hexalogy

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

War , Quotes , Game , Hell

“She thinks she's kept me. She would have kept me better if she had let me go now.”

Orson Scott Card Songmaster

Songmaster (1979)

Thinking

““I was ordained,” said the preacher. “No one ordains artists. They ordain themselves.”
Just as Taleswapper had expected. The preacher retreated to authority as soon as he feared his ideas could not stand on their own merit. Reasonable argument was impossible when authority became the arbiter.”

Orson Scott Card

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

Fear , Idea

“Will I be coming to you as husband or a child? A partner or a student?”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, The Call Of Earth (1992)

““Are you all right, sir?” asked Hezekiah.
“Just fighting over old battles in my mind,” said John. “It’s the problem with age. You have all these rusty arguments, and no quarrel to use them in. My brain is a museum, but alas, I’m the only visitor, and even I am not terribly interested in the displays.””

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 11.

Age , Problem , Fight