Quotes from Orson Scott Card

I know you know, and you know that I know that you know. It spirals on from there, so let's just assume the dot dot dot.

Is the future, is the past, all that matters to you? Don't you have just a little bit of room for the present?

That is the Earth, he thought. Not a globe thousands of kilometers around, but a forest with a shining lake, a house hidden at the crest of the hill, high in the trees, a grassy slope leading upward from the water, fish leaping and birds strafing to take the bugs that lived at the border between water and sky. Earth was the constant noise of crickets and winds and birds. And the voice of one girl, who spoke to him out of his far-off childhood.

Why should I worry about uncreating so much of human history? Why should I care that it will be worse than forgotten, that it will be unknown? Why should that seem to be a crime, when all of human history is an eyeblink compared to the billions of years the stars have shone?

Everyone was always in such a rush to shoot forward that they never took the time to look back. Which was a mistake. If you wanted to avoid snags, kinks, knots, and cuts, you had to keep your mind on your line, as the saying went.

Human beings remain grubs all the lives.

If you spend your whole life pretending to be good, then you are indistinguishable from a good person. Relentless hypocrisy eventually becomes the truth.

Loneliness is at the heart of Ender's Game, and the reason it works so well is because it carries with it the firm assurance that even though Ender never feels himself to belong,the reader knows he does belong, that he is the ultimate insider even though he stands outside.

Maybe it isn't based on what you deserve. Maybe it's based on what you need.

You underestimate yourself.

you might change the props and the actors, the play of human history is always the same

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.

Civilization is only a pretense; in the crisis, we become mere apes again, forgetting the rational biped of our pretensions and becoming instead the hairy primate at the mouth of the cave, screeching at the enemy, wishing it would go away, fingering the heavy stone that we'll use the moment it comes close enough.

That's the problem with Peter, said Theresa. Only the one? said Peter.

You're not crazy. You're not evil. But you can't stop.

I spend all my time thinking things through. It's acting on my thoughts that gets tricky. Which ones should I act on, and which ones should I ignore?

Rigg, said Father, you're so smart and so dumb at the same time that it almost takes my breath awway

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.

See how ignorant you are? You don't even know why you need to know the things you don't know yet.

Do you think we're making a mistake? snapped the Bishop. Not at all, said Dom Cristao. I think we've taken a step toward something truly magnificent. But humankind almost never forgives true greatness. Fortunately, said the Bishop, humankind isn't the judge that matters. And now I intend to pray for this boy, since medical science has obviously reached the boundary of its competence.

Why do you say that I am alone? My body is with me wherever I am, telling me endless stories of hunger and satisfaction, weariness and sleep, eating and drinking and breathing and life. With such company who could ever be alone?

You get used to being naked, that's the first thing that Ivan discovered. Crashing through thick brush with branches snagging at your bare skin, you stop worrying about who's looking and and spend your time trying to keep yourself from being flayed alive. He got shy again when they entered the village, but once he decided simply to let the gawkers gawk, he found himself much more interested in what he was seeing than what they were.

There are maybe two or three thousand people in the world as smart as us, little sister. Most of them are making a living somewhere. Teaching, the poor bastards, or doing research. Precious few of them are actually in positions of power." "I guess we're the lucky few." "Funny as a one-legged rabbit, Val." "Of which there are no doubt several in these woods." "Hopping in neat little circles.

Fatherhood to us was an act of passion, soon forgot; but not to Orem ap Avonap. Never guessing that the blond and happy farmer was no blood of his, Orem had taken a part of that simple man into himself and saved it for this time. At any time in the Palace he might run by, Youth on this shoulders or, as time went by, toddling along behind.