Quotes from Orson Scott Card

I had the foolish idea that we should test for desirable and useful traits so that we could assemble ideally balanced teams to the colonies. [...] It's like those foolish attempts to control immigration to America based on the traits that were deemed desirable, when in fact the only trait that defines Americans historically is descended from somebody willing to give up everything to live there.

I have never resisted the Lord in my life, Sister LeSueur, and I never will. But I'm not so hungry for dialogue with him that I have to make up his part as well as my own.

It was a lie, of course, that it wouldn't hurt a bit. But since adults always said it when it was going to hurt, he could count on that statement as an accurate prediction of the future. Sometimes lies were more dependable than the truth.

My father once told me that there are no gods; only the cruel manipulations of evil people who pretended that their power was good and their exploitation was love. But if there are no gods; why are we so hungry to believe in them? Just because evil liars stand between us and the gods and block our view of them does not mean that the bright halo that surrounds each liar is not the outer edges of a god, waiting for us to find our way around the lie.

I believe, when it comes to storytelling ... that mistakes are often the beginning of the best ideas. After all, a mistake wasn't planned. It can't be a cliché. All you have to do is think of a reason why the mistake isn't a mistake at all, and you might have something fresh and wonderful, something to stimulate a story you never thought of quite that way before.

Who but the adolescent is free to have the adventures that most of us are looking for when we turn to storytellers to satisfy our hunger?

I've learned all I'm ever going to learn from you.

You can't leave [the children] to God when God has left them to us. - Sister Carlotta

But I fear that I also underestimate the stupidity of the rest of mankind.

From you I can learn things that nobody knows.

In fact she's a Baptist, which is almost like being Christian, only louder.

So plans of attack, what good are they then? We try, we do what we can, but what really counts is what you do when command breaks down.

I'm crazy,' said Ender. 'But I think I'm OK.

Oh, Pipo, I'd be glad for you to try. But do believe me, my dear friend, touching her heart is like bathing in ice." "I imagine. I imagine it feels like bathing in ice to the person touching her. But how does it feel to her? Cold as she is, it must surely burn like fire.

Since I don't have actual authority over anybody, Petra, how can it possibly matter if I'm not legitimately authorized?

Watch closely, folks, here it is: Science, the ugly little beast that devours itself!)

It was possible, wasn't it, that he loved her, and that in this time of terrifying opportunity he was willing to weaken himself before her in order to win her love.

You've lost faith in yourself? Isn't that rich? A god who's become a self-atheist!

Nobody ever completely means what they say. Even when they think they're telling the truth, there's always something hidden behind their words.

In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them—" "You beat them." For

I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not "true" because we're hungry for another kind of truth: The mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all: our own self-story. Fiction, because it is not about somebody who actually lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about ourself.

We need you to help us figure out how you can help us.

When your child goes off to war, you will never get him back. Not as he was, not the same boy. Changed, if he comes back at all.

What a laugh, though. To think that one human being could ever really know another. You could get used to each other, get so habituated that you could speak their words right along with them, but you never knew why other people said what they said or did what they did, because they never even knew themselves. Nobody understands anybody.