Quotes from Orson Scott Card

The selective voluntary blindness of human beings allows them to ignore the moral consequences of their choices. It has been one of the species' most valuable traits, in terms of the survival of any particular human community.

The kid is scary.

Do not shout at me, Mr. Quill, said John [Adams]. Justice may be blind, but she is not deaf.

Firequencher raised his hand. I've been staying out of family conversations. Do I get credit for that?

For it is in the millions of small melodies that the truth of history is always found, for history only matters because of the effects we see or imagine in the lives of the ordinary people who are caught up in, or give shape to, the great events.

A person is what he says and does; that's how you learn whether his reputation was earned or manufactured.

Knocking him down won the first fight. I wanted to win all the next ones, too. So they'd leave me alone.

Everything possible to be believed is an image of truth. -Taleswapper

So I don't even get a chance to learn before I'm being judged.

Is it some law of human nature that you inevitably become whatever your first commander was?

In my experience, influence is power.

Nonsense, said Graff. Ender always has plans within plans.

I didn't want to kill them all. I didn't want to kill anybody! I'm not a killer! You didn't want me, you bastards, you wanted Peter, but you made me do it, you tricked me into it!

It's all just fictions anyway. We do what we do and then we make up reasons for it afterward but they're never the true reasons, the truth is always just out of reach.

The ways of love are strange and hard: The love you want is always barred; The love you have you want to change. The ways of love are hard and strange.

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. Hezekiah laughed, but there was affection in it. I would love nothing better than to visit there. But I'm afraid I'd be tempted to loot the place, and carry it all away with me.

He walked down the corridor, lined with his soldiers, who looked at him with love, with awe, with trust. Except Bean, who looked at him with anguish. Ender Wiggin was not larger than life, Bean knew. He was exactly life-sized, and so his larger-than-life burden was too much for him. And yet he was bearing it. So far.

I could become a businessman and run some big corporation, I'd scramble and maneuver until I was at the top of everything and what would I have? Nothing.

This is the Speaker for the Dead? Judging someone by appearances? Maybe I've fallen in love with Grego. You've always been a sucker for people who pee on you.

He didn't feel that way about anybody. You just live in the place you're in, you don't worry about where you used to be or where you wish you were, here is where you are and here's where you've got to find a way to survive and lying in bed boo-hooing doesn't help much with that.

History is an omlette. THe eggs are already broken.

Well, I'm your man. I'm the bloody bastard you wanted when you had me spawned. I'm your tool, and what difference does it make if I hate the part of me that you most need? What difference does it make that when the little serpents killed me in the game, I agreed with them, and was glad.

If human beings are all monsters, why should I sacrifice anything for them? Because they are beautiful monsters..., And when they live in a network of peace and hope, when they trust the world and their deepest hungers are fulfilled, then within that system, that delicate web, there is joy. That is what we live for, to bind the monsters together, to murder their fear and give birth to their beauty.

We were all fated to die, and so it is good that at least we can be sure our deaths today might bring about a good end, might make the world a better place.