Quotes from Orson Scott Card

Others find humanity by looking in their own hearts. Only lost souls need to search for it outside themselves.

I tell students that suspense comes, not from knowing almost nothing, but from knowing almost everything and caring very much about the small part still unknown.

I hope you had fun, I hope you had a nice, nice time being happy, Ender. It might be the last time in your life.

And then the queen wept with all her heart. Not for the cruel and greedy man who had warred and killed and savaged everywhere he could. But for the boy who had somehow turned into that man, the boy whose gentle hand had comforted her childhood hurts, the boy whose frightened voice had cried out to her at the end of his life, as if he wondered why he had gotten lost inside himself, as if he realized that it was too, too late to get out again.

Rigg) had often complained that all these languages were useless, and Father had only said, A man who speaks but one language understands none.

We have discussed your definition, analyzed its ramifications to a reasonable depth, and accept it, said the expendable. Meaning I gave you what you wanted? Ambition and desire are human traits. You gave us what we lacked.

No army had ever fragmented itself like that before, but ender was not planning to do anything that had been done before, either.

Poke had never shared out so many raisins, because she had never had so many to share. But the little kids wouldn't understand that. They'd think, Poke gave us garbage, and Achilles gave us raisins. That's because they were stupid.

A real god doesn't care about control. A real god already has control of everything that needs controlling. Real gods would want to teach you how to be just like them.

Achilles acted as if he had already won, and because the other kids followed him, he had.

Because human nature never changes.

When you have faith in something a lot of other people believe then you a member of the church said Ceas, When you have faith in something nobody believes, then you a complete wacko

He was only a child, doing what adults led him to do; but somewhere in his heart he knew that even a child is a real person, that a child's acts are real acts, that even a child's play is not without moral context.

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

I'll become exactly the tool you want me to be, said Ender silently, but at least I wont be fooled into it. I'll do it because I choose to, not because you tricked me, you sly bastard.

In the real world irrational things happened, impossible coincidences happened, because probability required that coincidences rarely, but not never, occur.

Because here's the thing?we don't give a shit about fairness here. We're soldiers. Soldiers do not give the other guy a sporting chance. Soldiers shoot in the back, lay traps and ambushes, lie to the enemy and outnumber the other bastard every chance they get. Your kind of murder only works among civilians. And you were too cocky, too stupid, too insane to realize it.

And yet.. even if you had been right, it would only have been by accident. A broken clock is right two times a day.

Don't make fun of me! Ender said. I'm afraid I'm going crazy.

He can have friends. It's parents he can't have.

Happiness can depend as easily on useless things as on useful ones.

He committed the crime of stupidity while under my command, said Citizen. Oh my, said Rigg. They're handing out the death penalty for that these days?

Today, one of the brothers asked me: Is it a terrible prison, not to be able to move from the place where you're standing? You answered... I told him that I am now more free than he is. The inability to move frees me from the obligation to act. You who speak languages, you are such liars.

You don't have to eat the entire turd to know that it's not a crab cake.