Orson Scott Card: Doing (page 3)

“Don’t you think it’s ironic that you have no idea what you’re supposed to do,” said Verily, “and yet so many people have gone to so much trouble to prevent you from doing it?”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 3.

People , Idea , Thinking

“Calvin, what kind of trouble are you planning to make?”
“No trouble at all,” said Calvin, annoyed. “Why do you think I want to cause trouble?”

Orson Scott Card

“Because you are awake.”
Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 4.

Thinking

“I will not be tamed, only persuaded. I will not be coerced or led blindly or tricked or bullied - I am willing only to be convinced. If you don't trust your own basic goodness enough to tell me what you're trying to do… Then you're confessing your own moral weakness and I'll never serve you.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, The Memory Of Earth (1992)

“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

“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

““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

“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

“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 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

“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 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)

“And then he realized that he could never make anything out of the Unmaker, could never make the Unmaker do or be anything because it was only Undoing and Unbeing. It wasn’t the Unmaker he needed to call to, it was all the living things around him, the trees, the grass, the earth, the air itself. It was the greensong that he needed to restore.”

Orson Scott Card

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

Tree , Grass

“As he had so many times before, Taleswapper addressed a few silent words to God, which always came down to this question: Why do you put us to so much trouble, when it all comes to naught in the end?…And, as usual, God had nothing much to say to Taleswapper when his questioning was done.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Red Prophet (1988), Chapter 15.

God , Question , Time

“There's some people who do things so bad it tears the fabric of the world, and then there's some people so sweet and good that they can feel it when the world gets torn. They see things, they know things, only they're so good and pure that they don't understand what it is that they're seeing.”

Orson Scott Card book Lost Boys

Lost Boys (1992)

People , World , Feeling , Understanding

“I do matter, and despising me was the gravest error of their lives.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, The Ships Of Earth (1994)

Error

“You are not what you seem.
So many people have said that that I'm beginning to think that's precisely how I do seem. What is it I seem to be that you have now discovered that I'm not?”

Orson Scott Card

Treason (1988)

People , Thinking

“This is what I want to do forever, each one thought. Rise in the morning, come to the mill, and work all day with him beside me. Never mind that the wish was impossible. Never mind that they might never see each other again, once the boy left for his apprenticeship back in the place of his birth. That only added to the sweetness of the moment, which would soon become a memory, would soon become a dream.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Seventh Son (1987), Chapter 15 (closing words).

Dreams , Boy , Birth , Memory

“Why do you bother asking, when you know the answer and you also know that you don't intend to believe it?”

Orson Scott Card book Homebody

Homebody (1998)