Quotes from Orson Scott Card

Ah, Vitaly, we all come from Eros. ~Sel Menach

Are you asking us to impregnate all the females on all the ships with your DNA, so that you can be sure of having progeny? No! said Ram in horror. What a terrible thing for a woman, to wake up pregnant- a violation of trust. It would destroy all nineteen colonies. Not to mention being embarrassing when all the babies look like you.

If our systems should fail, we would faithfully report the fact. We have no ego-protection that would cause us to deceive you or ourselves. Whereasyou are engaged in ego-protection right now. You thought you would be necessary during the voyage, and you now discover that you were not. This makes you feel bad.

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

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

you don't grow up until you stop worrying about other people's purposes or lack of them and find the purposes you believe in for yourself.

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

You will soon learn that there ARE no strange stars, no alien skies - No? Only skies and stars, in all their varieties. Each one with its own flavour, and all flavours good - Now YOU think like a tree. Flavours! Of skies! I have tasted the heat of many stars, and all of them were sweet

The problem was, the people who should shut up were the ones talking the most.

Oh, Val," said Father. "All you have to do is live your life, and everyone around you will be happier." "No greatness, then." "Val," said Mother, "goodness trumps greatness any day." "Not in the history books," said Valentine. "Then the wrong people are writing history, aren't they?" said Father.

Even gentle people recognize that sometimes the decision not to kill is a decision to die.

That's what Ender has to understand. There really is evil in the world, and wickedness, and every brand of stupidity. There's meanness and heartlessness and... I don't even know which of them is me. - Hyrum Graff

If he did not speak his tale, it grew dank and musty, it shrank inside him, while with the telling the tale stayed fresh and virtuous.

But always a giant, long before his body showed it.

But what kind of race is it, when the racers never let go of each other's hands, and the winner pulls the loser laughing over the finish line?

Two faces of the same coin. And I am the metal in between.

This was done to you by men and women whose only desire was to enslave you; they have succeeded so well that you are proud of your slavery.

Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to fill the roles given you by good people, by people who love you. I didn't come here because I wanted to be a colonist. I came because I've spent my whole life in the company of the brother that I hated. Now I want a chance to know the brother that I love, before it's too late, before we're not children anymore.

Human beings *do* metamorphose. They change their identity constantly. However, each new identity thrives on the delusion that it was always in possession of the body it has just conquered.

The only way to end things completely was to hurt him enough that his fear was stronger than his hate.

Ulysses was an elaborate prank, and our supposed intellectual elite continue to fall for it.

We're not taking odds on it," said Ender. "Nothing that actually happens is likely until it exists, and then it's certain. You exist.

In Russia you learn patience, said Ivan. In America you learn action.

They did not wait so eagerly for each new transmission from the ansible; the names that were famous on earth meant little to them now.