Quotes from Orson Scott Card

None of us could be happy for long, doing nothing. Or perhaps it's just that none of us could be happy living with no other company than ourself.

Me? I'm nothing. I'm a fart in the air conditioning. I'm always there, but most of the time nobody knows it.

he could feel the earth beneath, all the deep stone of it, cool and hard near the surface of the earth, but hotter and softer as you went deep, until it flowed like honey, a vast sweet fiery ocean of molten rock a thousand times more voluminous and ten thousand times heavier than the sea. It felt to him as if it were his own blood, and his heart pumped it.

we have some good ideas here. But the only way to know if they're workable is to try to make them fail. If we fail to fail, then maybe we're on the right track.

One is never too old to be a student of the enemy.

What I'm telling you is, there's some people who do things so bad it tears at the fabric of the world, and then there's some people so sweet and good that they can feel it when the world gets torn.

There is nothing so stupid or dangerous or painful that people won't eagerly do it, if by doing it they will make others believe they are better or stronger or more honorable. I have seen people poison themselves, destroy their children, abandon their mates, cut themselves off from the world, all so that others would think they were a better sort of person.

No point in getting emotional about anything. Being emotional didn't help with survival. What mattered was to learn everything, analyze the situation, choose a course of action, and then move boldly. Know, think, choose, do. There was no place in that list for "feel.

Human beings didn't evolve brains in order to lie around on lakes. Killing's the first thing we learned.

Nights were so real that days began to seem dreamlike to him.

The power to cause pain is the only power that matters, the power to kill and desroy, because if you can't kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one will ever save you.

The boy whose arm he had broken was out for vengeance. His name, Ender quickly learned, was Bernard. He spoke his own name with a French accent, since the French, with their arrogant Separatism, insisted that the teaching of Standard not begin until the age of four, when the French language patterns were already set. His accent made him exotic and interesting; his broken arm made him a martyr; his sadism made him a natural focus for all those who loved pain in others.

Life is a suicide course, Miro. Check it out- basic philosophy course. You spend your life running out of fuel and when you're finally out, you croak.

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

An interesting side effect of the battle was that Ender emerged at the top of the soldier efficiency list. Since he hadn't fired a shot, he had a perfect record on shooting—no misses at all. And since he had never been eliminated or disabled, his percentage there was excellent. No one else came close. It made a lot of boys laugh, and others were angry, but on the prized efficiency list, Ender was now the leader.

I stole their future from them; I can only begin to repay by seeing what I can learn from their past.

I just don't know if people actually perceive which events are miracles and which are not. There are no doubt many miracles claimed which were not miracles at all. There are also probably many miracles that no one recognized when they occurred.

Learn from them, because I will always be there, one step ahead of you, programming more difficult and advanced patterns into the computer so that your next battle is more difficult, so that you are pushed

In the dark, where do shadows go?

The emotion she could deal with best was anger.

Maybe knowing about craziness means you don't have to fall for it.

PLACE YOUR HAND ON THE SCANNER AT THE HEAD OF YOUR BUNK AND SPEAK YOUR NAME TWICE.

Knowing at the same time that whatever people pretend to be, they become.

We do have a right to defend ourselves as best we can, and the only way we found that works is killing the buggers before they kill us.