Orson Scott Card Quotes

If I have to choose between an omnipotent God who leaves the world in this condition, and a God who has only a little bit of power but really cares and tries to make things better, I'll take you every time. Go on playing God, Hyrum. You're not bad at it. Sometimes you kind of get it right.

“You're such a liar.”
“But I’m a beautiful liar, don’t you think?” She flashed her best smile at her friend.
“I don’t understand what men see in women anyway,” her friend answered. “Hexes or no hexes, as long as a woman has her clothes on a man can’t see what he’s interested in anyhow.”

Like running hurdles. Work so hard, jump over every one, fast, high enough but no higher, because you can't afford to hang in the air. And then, when the race is over, you're dripping with sweat, either they beat you or you beat them... and then a couple of guys come out and move the hurdles out of the way. Turns out they were nothing. All that work to jump over them, but now they're gone.

If he was a good man, how could he leave me? So he must not be a good man. But if he isn't good, then why does it hurt so much to lose him? Is it just my pride that's wounded?

What I am seeing right now is a man who is so dominated by his mother that he is willing to throw away his marriage in order to protect her from the trauma of growing up and acting like an adult.

You are mine, but you are not mine. I am yours, but you hardly know it.

The most evil creatures don’t desire the destruction of everything—they only desire to exploit it for themselves.

He'd undone all he could. You can be sorry, and you can be forgiven, but you can't call back the futures that your bad decisions lost. He didn't need no philosopher to tell him that.

Last night Alvin just got mad, which she said would only guarantee that he'd stay stupid.

She did love him, you know... It was a selfish, possessive love, but it was all she knew how to give.

Will I be coming to you as husband or a child? A partner or a student?

We were all victims of an oppressive system, but that mattered far less to us than our deep bonding with our owners.

Perhaps you don't desire poetry as much as you would like to have my torchy knowledge of your possible futures, but I dare say poetry will do you far more good. For knowing the future only makes you timid and complacent by turns, while poetry can shape you into the kind of souls who can face any future with boldness and wisdom and nobility, so that you need not know the future at all, so that any future will be an opportunity for greatness, if you have greatness in you.

If it isn't a wonderful story first, who cares how "important" it is?

Most of the things people say they remember they only imagine anyways.