Quotes from Orson Scott Card

God made us with death inside, and also with intelligence. We have our seventy years or so, perhaps ninety, with care in the mountains of Georgia, a hundred and thirty is not unheard of, though I personally believe they are all liars. They would claim to be immortal if they thought they could get away with it. We could live forever, if we were willing to be stupid the whole time.

The touch of kindness in this frightening place was enough to push someone over the edge into tears.

There are so many powerful people in this world who refuse to see any vision they didn't think of.

In the face of a threat to the survival of the species, all these planetside trivialities are put aside until the crisis passes.

Russians are never more cooperative than when they are about to betray you.

Ender conocía las reglas nunca dichas de la guerra entre hombres, aunque sólo tuviera seis años. Estaba prohibido golpear al oponente caído indefenso en el suelo; sólo un animal lo haría. Precisamente por eso se acercó al cuerpo inerme de Stilson y le dio otra parada en las costillas, con saña.

I'll tell your story,' said Ender. 'Then I will truly live forever.

they were guilty of too much belief in a story they were told. Most people are able to hold most stories they're told in abeyance, to keep a little distance between the story and their inmost heart.

I find out what I really want by seeing what I do," said Ender. "That's what we all do, if we're honest about it. We have our feelings, we make our decisions, but in the end we look back on our lives and see how sometimes we ignored our feelings, while most of our decisions were actually rationalizations because we had already decided

Para impedir que un ser humano haga algo, hay que encontrar un medio para conseguir que deje de querer hacerlo.

the fact that you have belonged to the human race more deeply and fully than most people could even imagine, find a way to believe that, and don't hide from life in the unfathomable, lightless depths of relativistic space.

You couldn't look at children and hope to see much of their parents beyond their physical appearance, and not always that. They came as Wordsworth said, trailing clouds of glory. Along with a few clouds of other things not quite so glorious.

But a person who really believes she doesn't belong to any community at all invariably kills herself, either by killing her body or by giving up her identity and going mad.

A person is what he says and does; that's how you learn whether his reputation was earned or manufactured.

He wasn't telling her what the gods were, he was telling her what goodness was. To want other people to grow. To want other people to have all the good things that you have. And to spare them the bad things if you can. That was goodness.

And I never believe a man who says he never lies. A man always assumes that others are as virtuous as himself, said Taleswapper.

H]e had come to work for what the fee could buy, and not for joy of the work itself.

Nothing that actually happens is likely until it exists, and then it's certain. You exist.

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?

Yet in your stories, you must imagine all these things, not just because it will make the world of your story more complete, but also because the very completeness of the world will transform your story and make it far more truthful. As your characters move through a more complex world, they will have to respond with greater subtlety and flexibility; the constant surprises they run into will also surprise the reader - and you!

You only feel that way because the boy you love is not aware enough of his own feelings to make things clear to you or even to himself.

Don't you? said Father. To spare the rod is to spoil the child---God has told us how to make our children pure from the moment they achieve accountability until they have mastered their own discipline. I strike my son's body to teach his spirit to embrace the pure love of Christ. You will teach him to hate his enemies, so that it no longer matters whether his body is living or dead, for his soul will be polluted and God will spit him out of his mouth.

Even if there is no such thing as free will, we have to treat each other as if there were free will in order to live together in society.

Somebody's heart says, 'I am the wind from the cold snow of the mountain, and you are the tiger whose roar will freeze in your own ears before you tremble and die in the iron knife of my winter eyes'?