Quotes from Orson Scott Card

Graff had deliberately set him up to be separate from the other boys, made it impossible for him to be close to them. And he began now to suspect the reasons behind it. It wasn't to unify the rest of the group—in fact, it was divisive. Graff had isolated Ender to make him struggle. To make him prove, not that he was competent, but that he was far better than everyone else.

By deciding that they would study only that which could be verified under controlled conditions, they had merely limited their field of endeavor. Most truth lay outside the neat confines of science....

I am just like Peter. Take my monitor away, and I am just like Peter.

That was the difference between her and the idiots of the world. They were all trying to look smart and keep their social standing. Whereas Valentine didn't care about social standing, she cared about getting it right. Getting the truth.

Human beings are free except when humanity needs them.

And it's true, thought Valentine. I'm not the same person, really, from book to book, because each world changes who I am, even as I write down the story of the world. And this world most of all.

In that deep place she knew that it was all her fault, that evil arose out of the dark shadows of her heart and seeped into the world poisoning everything. She carried the beast inside her heart, the devourer of happiness... No, no, it's not true, she said silently...God does not want my death, not by my own hand, never by my own hand...It wouldn't help anyone. Wouldn't help, would only hurt. Wouldn't help, would only...

I firmly believe that a good storyteller's education never ends, because to tell stories perfectly you have to know everything about everything. Naturally, none of us actually achieve such complete knowledge - but we should live as if we were trying to do so. You can't afford to close off any area of inquiry.

In America, film is the highest form of art that the public aspires to. People will come to me and say 'Oh, your book was so good, they ought to make a movie out of it!' To which I reply 'Well, why? It's already a book.

How much time? Not as much as I had yesterday.

The other boys started to complain that pushing off walls was movement, not combat. There is no combat without movement, Ender said.

You can't alter your DNA and meet that expectation, so get over it. You are what you are.

Until you have examined and comprehended the world around you, you can't possibly create a complex and believable imaginary world.

What an unfriendly country," said Noxon. "Different time, different place," said Wheaton. "We think we're a very welcoming country. Generous and kind. Unless we don't like your language or the way you look.

If you try and lose then it isn't your fault. But if you don't try and we lose, then it's all your fault.

Time to repay old humiliations, is that it, Bean? 'Of course,' Ender said contemptuously. 'I'm not as close to the floor as you are.

God lets the guilty live right among the good, hurting them all they want; he lets the tares grow amid the corn.

Fairness is a wonderful attribute, Major Anderson. It has nothing to do with war.

Ender had come to feel a unity so strong that the word we came to his lips much more easily than I.

But my eagerness to sacrifice little children in order to save mankind is wearing thin.

So why don't you go home? Dink smiled crookedly. Because I can't give up the game. He tugged at the fabric of his flash suit, which lay on the bunk beside him. Because I love this.

Ender Wiggin must believe that no matter what happens, no adult will ever, ever step in to help him in any way. He must believe, to the core of his soul, that he can only do what he and the other children work out for themselves. If he does not believe that, then he will never reach the peak of his abilities.

A pure soul must never grow attached to any one thing. A pure soul must expose himself to new things every day.

Don't we all manipulate people? Even if we openly ask them to make a choice, don't we try to frame it so they'll choose as we think they should?