Quotes from Orson Scott Card

Oh," said Wheaton. "Oh, I see. Yes, that does bring mathematics into it.

They offered something that was genuinely good, and people's lives were better because they offered it. It was not a noble cause that would get written up in the histories. But it was not nothing, either. A person could do worse than spend some large percentage of his life in a cause like that. Bean

Don't ever ask questions that can only be answered one way, no matter what the truthful answer might be.

And there it was. The moment a man answered her right back instead of getting his dander up, why, she flashed a smile fit to charm the warts off a toad.

Still, just because humans did it, too, did not make it sensible.

Nobody wants xenocide, but if it happens, I want to make sure it's the other guys that disappear. When it comes to war, human is human and alien is alien. All that ramen business goes up in smoke when we're talking about survival.

Shadows that children make on the wall," said Petra, "and someone turns the light off." "Or turns a brighter one on," said Alai, "and the shadows disappear.

When you have wisdom that another person knows that he needs, you give it freely. But when the other person doesn't yet know that he needs your wisdom, you keep it to yourself.

I don't know a soul who doesn't maintain two separate lists of doctrines—the ones that they believe that they believe; and the ones that they actually try to live by.

Most armies practiced mass maneuvers, preformed strategies. Ender had none. Instead he trained his toon leaders to use their small units effectively in achieving limited goals. Unsupported, alone, on their own initiative.

if he maintained that speed and went outside, the ship would appear to him as if it wasn't moving at all since he would be moving at the same velocity. But going outside at a high velocity was risky. He'd expose himself to gamma radiation and the threat of micrometeoroids. Getting hit by a tiny rock particle would likely be fatal. Victor couldn't take that risk. Not with so much at stake. It would

Elemak pulled the shower cord before he soaped. The moment the water hit him he yowled, and then did his own little splash dance, shaking his head and flipping water all over the courtyard while jabbering "ooga-booga looga-booga" just like a little kid.

Humans are very proud of their changes, but every imagined transformation turns out to be a new set of excuses for behaving exactly as the individual has always behaved.> <

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—when the truth was gettable.

sesquipedalian bushwa.

But I can promise you that there's somebody else somewhere else who'll make your god look like a maggot by comparison.

If they had the ordinary amount of good luck. Which didn't seem to be the trend at the moment.

How could she have missed it? It was her knack, to see what people intended, what they were about to do. Yet she saw no further than his smile the first time they met, saw nothing but his genuine love and sympathy and concern for her. How could her knack have failed her?

Not bad for two kids who've only got about eight pubic hairs between them, Peter said.

Ahora sentía la magnitud de la pérdida de Pipo. El cuerpo mutilado en la falda de la colina no era su muerte, sino simplemente los despojos de su muerte. La muerte en sí era el vacío dejado en su vida.

Come with us!" shouted one of the Indonesians. Bean thought this was probably a good idea. Since the assassination attempt had included one backup, it might include more, and the sooner he got out of there the better. Of course, he didn't know anything about these Indonesians, or why they would have been there at this moment to save his life, but the fact that they had guns and weren't firing them at him implied that for the moment, at least, they were his dearest friends.

I've had enough adventures, said Noxon, to know that boredom is the closest thing to happiness. Boredom means that there's nothing wrong. You're not hungry, you're not in pain. Nobody's making any demands on you. Your mind is free to think whatever you want. The only thing that makes boredom unpleasant is if you're impatient for something else to happen.

Hot anger was bad. Ender's anger was cold, and he could use it. Bonzo's was hot, and so it used him.

Mama Squirrel laughed out loud and shook her head. "I swear I don't know why Margaret Larner would marry such a one as you." "It was an act of faith," said Alvin.