Orson Scott Card Quotes

Among my most prized possessions are words that I have never spoken.

In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him.

I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it

Ender Wiggin must believe that no matter what happens, no adult will ever, ever step in to help him in any way.

The education that prepared me was my general education classes, which I tried to avoid when I was a stupid undergraduate, but which gave me the foundation of general knowledge that makes a career as a writer possible.

An enemy, Ender Wiggin," whispered the old man. "I am your enemy, the first one you've ever had who was smarter than you. There is no teacher but the enemy. No one but the enemy will tell you what the enemy is going to do. No one but the enemy will ever teach you how to destroy and conquer. Only the enemy shows you where you are weak. Only the enemy tells you where he is strong. And the rules of the game are what you can do to him and what you can stop him from doing to you. I am your enemy from now on. From now on I am your teacher.

There was no doubt now in Ender's mind. There was no help for him. Whatever he faced, now and forever, no one would save him from it. Peter might be scum, but Peter had been right, always right; the power to cause pain is the only power that matters, the power to kill and destroy, because if you can't kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one will ever save you.

I need you to be clever, Bean. I need you to think of solutions to problems we haven't seen yet. I want you to try things that no one has ever tried because they're absolutely stupid.

What else should you be? Human beings didn't evolve brains in order to lie around on lakes. Killing's the first thing we learned. And a good thing we did, or we'd be dead, and the tigers would own the earth.

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

We're like the wicked witch. We promise gingerbread, then eat the little brats alive.

Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.

There's only one thing that will make them stop hating you. And that's being so good at what you do that they can't ignore you

There is more good writing and good acting in any ten minutes of Twister than in, say, all of Citizen Kane.

Be proud, Bonito, pretty boy. You can go home and tell your father, Yes, I beat up Ender Wiggin, who was barely ten years old, and I was thirteen. And I had only six of my friends to help me, and somehow we managed to defeat him, even though he was naked and wet and alone--Ender Wiggin is so dangerous and terrifying it was all we could do not to bring two hundred.

Ender didn't like fighting. He didn't like Peter's kind, the strong against the weak, and he didn't like his own kind either, the smart against the stupid.

The wise are not wise because they make no mistakes. They are wise because they correct their mistakes as soon as they recognize them.

One judge is coughing his life out into bloody handkerchiefs and the other is burying his wife, and you think this is how God answers your prayers?

Human beings are free except when humanity needs them. Maybe humanity needs you. To do something. Maybe humanity needs me—to find out what you're good for. We might both do despicable things, Ender, but if humankind survives, then we were good tools.

I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.

Madness, and then illumination.

There are times when the world is rearranging itself, and at times like that, the right words can change the world.

Sometimes lies were more dependable than the truth.

In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them.... I destroy them.

Every day people judge all other people. The question is whether they judge wisely.

If pigs could vote, the man with the slop bucket would be elected swineherd every time, no matter how much slaughtering he did on the side.

There's a sort of rage a man feels when he's been deceived where he most trusted. It compares to no other anger.

Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along―the same person that I am today.

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

We don't read novels to have an experience like life. Heck, we're living lives, complete with all the incompleteness. We turn to fiction to have an author assure us that it means something.

Changing the world is good for those who want their names in books. But being happy, that is for those who write their names in the lives of others, and hold the hearts of others as the treasure most dear.

No matter how sexually attracted a man might be toward other men, or a woman toward other women, and no matter how close the bonds of affection and friendship might be within same-sex couples, there is no act of court or Congress that can make these relationships the same as the coupling between a man and a woman.

I fell into playwriting accidentally, took some classes in it, and also took creative writing classes, but I really didn't expect it to be a career because I didn't believe there was a way to make money as a playwright without being lucky and I didn't feel particularly lucky.

If you try and lose then it isn't your fault. But if you don't try and we lose, then it's all your fault.

Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down.

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

She worked her toes into the sand, feeling the tiny delicious pain of the friction of tiny chips of silicon against the tender flesh between her toes. That's life. It hurts, it's dirty, and it feels very, very good.

Do the gods of different nations talk to each other?...Is there some annual get-together where they compare each other's worshippers? Mine will bow their faces to the floor and trace woodgrain lines for me, says one. Mine will sacrifice animals, says another. Mine will kill anyone who insults me, says a third. Here is the question I think of most often: "Are there any who can honestly boast, My worshippers obey my good laws, and treat each other kindly, and live simple generous lives?

No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one's life is nothing.

You can't change what you don't understand.

Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don't see any.

You know how writers are... they create themselves as they create their work. Or perhaps they create their work in order to create themselves.

It's called civilization. Women invented it, and every time you men blow it all to bits, we just invent it again.

Music isn't just a pleasure, a transient satisfaction. It's a need, a deep hunger; and when the music is right, it's joy. Love. A foretaste of heaven. A comfort in grief. Is it too much to think that perhaps God speaks to us sometimes through music? How, then, could I be so ungrateful as to refuse the message?

Faith doesn't mean you never doubt. It only means you never act upon your doubts.

Short stories are designed to deliver their impact in as few pages as possible. A tremendous amount is left out, and a good short story writer learns to include only the most essential information.

Apparently the Dutch now prided themselves on being better at queues than the English, which was absurd, because standing cheerfully in line was the English national sport.

All is going well, very well, I couldn’t ask for anything better— So why do I hate my life?

Fiction, because it is not about somebody who actually lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself.

An eye for an eye? How Christian of you.' Unbelievers always want other people to act like Christians.