Quotes from Orson Scott Card

We have to go. I'm almost happy here.

Changing the world is good for those who want their names in books. But being happy, that is for those who write their names in the lives of others, and hold the hearts of others as the treasure most dear.

Music isn't just a pleasure, a transient satisfaction. It's a need, a deep hunger; and when the music is right, it's joy. Love. A foretaste of heaven. A comfort in grief. Is it too much to think that perhaps God speaks to us sometimes through music? How, then, could I be so ungrateful as to refuse the message?

You know how writers are... they create themselves as they create their work. Or perhaps they create their work in order to create themselves.

Home is anywhere that you know all your friends and all your enemies.

This emotion I'm feeling now, this is love, right? I don't know. Is it a longing? Is it a giddy stupid happiness just because you're with me? Yes, she said. That's influenza, said Miro. Watch for nausea or diarrhea within a few hours.

The story itself, the true story, is the one that the audience members create in their minds, guided and shaped by my text, but then transformed, elucidated, expanded, edited, and clarified by their own experience, their own desires, their own hopes and fears.

Happiness is not a life without pain, but rather a life in which the pain is traded for a worthy price.

We're all trying to decide whether your scores up there are a miracle or a mistake. A habit.

The story is one that you and I will construct together in your memory. If the story means anything to you at all, then when you remember it afterward, think of it, not as something I created, but rather as something that we made together.

I've watched through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and I tell you he's the one.

My needs are simple and few, thought Valentine. Food. Clothing. A comfortable place to sleep. And no idiots . But of course a world with no idiots would be lonely. If she herself were even allowed there.

We don't read novels to have an experience like life. Heck, we're living lives, complete with all the incompleteness. We turn to fiction to have an author assure us that it means something.

Madness, and then illumination.

You want to beat Peter? she asked No, he answered Beat the buggers. Then come home and see who notices Peter Wiggen anymore. Look him in the eye when all the world loves and reveres you. That'll be defeat in his eyes, Ender, thats how you win You don't understand he said Yes i do No you don't. I don't want to beat Peter Then what do you want? I want him to love me

Please don't disillusion me. I haven't had breakfast yet.

Soldiers can sometimes make decisions that are smarter than the orders they've been given.

Since when do you have to tell the enemy when he has won

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

I'm putting you in Dink Meeker's toon. From now on, as far as you're concerned, Dink Meeker is God. Then who are you? The personnel officer who hired God.

For children love is a feeling; for adults, it is a decision. Children wait to learn if their love is true by seeing how long it lasts; adults make their love true by never wavering from their commitment.

We thought we were the only thinking beings in the universe, until we met you, but never did we dream that thought could arise from the lonely animals who cannot dream each other's dreams.

I taught you everything you know. But I didn't teach you everything I know.

And then he thought: Is this how idiots rationalize their stupidity to themselves?