Quotes from Orson Scott Card

I think you don't grow up until you stop worrying about other people's purposes or lack of them and find the purposes you believe in for yourself.

All the stories are fictions. What matters is which fiction you believe.

At last he came to a door, with these words in glowing emeralds: THE END OF THE WORLD He did not hesitate. He opened the door and stepped through.

the seed of doubt was there, and it stayed, and every now and then sent out a little root. It changed everything, to have that seed growing. It made Ender listen more carefully to what people meant, instead of what they said. It made him wise.

He loved her, as you can only love someone who is an echo of yourself at your time of deepest sorrow.

Personal affection is a luxury you can have only after all your enemies are eliminated. Until then, everyone you love is a hostage, sapping your courage and corrupting your judgment.

I will never hurt you. I will always help you. If you are hungry Ill give you my food. If you are frightened I am your friend. I love you now. And love does not end.

Parents always make their worst mistakes with their oldest children. That's when parents know the least and care the most, so they're more likely to be wrong and also more likely to insist that they're right.

You killed more people than anybody in history. Be the best at whatever you do, that's what my mother always told me.

She will look at you as women look at men, and she will judge you as a woman judge men...not on the strength of their arguments, and not in their cleverness or prowess in battle, but rather on the force of their character, the intensity of their passion, their strength of soul, their compassion, and...ah, this above all...their conversation.

Every person is defined by the communities she belongs to.

You're not a human being until you value something more than the life of your body. And the greater the thing you live and die for the greater you are.

And enough for me that when my hand touched your shoulder, you leaned on me; and when you felt me slip away, you called my name.

The future is a hundred thousand threads, but the past is a fabric that can never be rewoven.

Knowledge is just opinion that you trust enough to act upon.

To reach out to you when I'm in need, and to try to be here for you when you need me back. And to feel such tenderness when I look at you that I want to stand between you and all the world: and yet also to lift you up and carry you above the strong currents of life; and at the same time, I would be glad to stand always like this, at a distance, watching you, the beauty of you.

But when it comes to human beings, the only type of cause that matters is final cause, the purpose. What a person had in mind. Once you understand what people really want, you can't hate them anymore. You can fear them, but you can't hate them, because you can always find the same desires in your own heart.

We're like the wicked witch. We promise gingerbread, then eat the little brats alive.

I know, you've been here a year, you think these people are normal. Well, they're not. WE'RE not. I look in the library, I call up books on my desk. Old ones, because they won't let us have anything new, but I've got a pretty good idea what children are, and we're not children. Children can lose sometimes, and nobody cares. Children aren't in armies, they aren't COMMANDERS, they don't rule over forty other kids, it's more than anybody can take and not get crazy.

I didn't want to see you. They told me. I was afraid that I'd still love you. I hoped that you would.

Being young is an 18 year prison sentence for a crime your parents committed. But you do get time off for good behavior.

Ender nodded. 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.

No book, however good, can survive a hostile reading.

The opposite of the happy ending is not actually the sad ending--the sad ending is sometimes the happy ending. The opposite of the happy ending is actually the unsatisfying ending.