Orson Scott Card citations

Page 5

“Lanik :
- Je suis en train de perdre Saranna.
L'Homee-qui-sais-tout :
- C'est très bien. Peresonne ne doit posséder quelqu'un d'autre.”

“En terme de reproduction, un mâle fait de son mieux s'il voyage et copule au maximum.”

“Même si le libre arbitre n'existe pas, nous devons nous comporter les uns envers les autres comme si le libre arbitre existait afin de pouvoir vivre en société.”

“Les sages ne sont pas sages parce qu'ils ne commettent jamais d'erreurs. Ils sont sages parce qu'ils corrigent leurs erreurs dès qu'ils les reconnaissent.”

“C'est la vie. Ça fait mal, c'est sale, mais c'est tellement bon.”

“La vie et encore assez douce pour nous… même si nous savons que cela ne tardera pas. Et cela aussi sera un bien. Même la mort sera un bien, je pense, non parce qu’elle mettra fin aux anciennes amertumes, mais parce qu’à mon avis elle sera la dernière des aigres saveurs qui m’ont signalé que j’étais en vie.
Par-dessous toutes choses je continue d’entendre le cri de la terre, mais il n’affecte plus ce que je vois et ce que je fais. Au contraire, il rehausse mes plaisirs, car le lever du soleil est plus éclatant à couse des sombres gouffres au fond de moi, et la sourire de Saranna est plus chaleureux à cause de la cruauté que j’ai connue, et les soins que je prodigue aux gens et aux animaux ont plus de valeur à cause des tueries que j’ai commises.”

“Il eut un surprenant sourire, puis il me prit dans ses bras et me dit : « Je ne pensais que tu m’avais trahi la dernière fois que tu as parti. Je ne comprenais pas, Lanik. Je pensais que si je te faisais confiance, cela signifie que tu agirais toujours comme je le voulais…”

“Mais peu importe qu’il y ait ou non des grands desseins extérieurs à moi. Mon seul espoir a été ceci : discerner ce qui pouvait être accompli, croire que c’était possible, et ensuite mettre tout en œuvre pour exécuter, à n’importe quel prix. Et quand une vie s’achève comme la mienne s’achèvera, nul ne peut me persuader que le prix ne valait pas d’être payé en échange de ce que j’ai reçu”

“Death is not a tragedy to the one who dies; to have wasted the life before that death, that is the tragedy.”

“I don't care how much you eat, Ender, self-cannibalism won't get you out of this school.”

“The society whose citizens are willing to stand and fight is the one with the best chance of surviving long enough for history to even notice.”

“I carry the seeds of death within me and plant them wherever I linger long enough to love.”

“Your trust in rationality makes you irrational.”

“Unemployment is capitalism's way of getting you to plant a garden.”

“This is what historians usually do, quibble about cause and effect when the point is, there are times when the world is in flux and the right voice in the right place can move the world. Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin, for instance. Bismark. Lenin.”

“As he thought of it, though, he could not imagine what “just living” might actually be. He had never done it in his life. But he wanted to do it anyway.”

“Grief, she reminded herself, is almost always for the mourner's loss.”

“If desire did not dim the brain, nobody would ever get married, drunk, or fat.”

“because if you can’t kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one will ever save you.”

“Nobodys life ever goes according to plan.
So why do we keep on planning?
Because that's how we know who we are. By what we intend to be. By what we try to become.
And fail.
I don't say 'fail'. I saw we aim and miss. But we still hit something.”

“Where loyalty bound creatures together, they became something larger, something new and whole and inexplicable.”

“Maybe she couldn't know who she was today. Maybe it was enough to know that she was no longer who she was before.”

“there were crimes and quarrels, alongside kindness and cooperation; there were people who loved each other and people who did not; it was a human world.”

“The lives of all people flow through time, and, regardless of how brutal one moment may be, how filled with grief or pain or fear, time flows through all lives equally.”

“Human: That's stupid. Isn't there grass on both sides?”

“Today, Mr. Darcy is a vampire.”

“We've devoted our lives to learning about them!" Miro said.

Ender stopped. "Not from them.”

“So I want to ask you a hypothetical question.

My favorite kind. Next to rhetorical ones. I can nap equally well through either kind.”

“I have to win this now, and for all time, or I’ll fight it every day and it will get worse and worse.”

“Poke gave him life. Ender gave it meaning.”

“Then you're dead, too, sweet little sister.'
Oh, yes,' said Valentine. 'They'll believe that. "I didn't know it would kill Andrew. And when he was dead, I didn't know it will kill Valentine too.”

“Being here alone with nothing to do, I've been thinking about myself too. Trying to understand why I hate myself so badly.”

“Quim," she said, "don't ever try to teach me about good and evil. I've been there, and you've seen nothing but a map.”

“Order and disorder', said the speaker, 'they each have their beauty.”

“Nature can't evolve a species that hasn't the will to survive. Individuals might be bred to sacrifice themselves, but the race as a whole can never cease to exist.”

“It is in the turmoil of chaos that we discover what, if anything, we are.”

“Nobody ever completely means what they say. Even when they think they're telling the truth, there's always something hidden behind their words.”