Orson Scott Card Quotes

He could afford to be generous, since he didn't have to pay for it himself. Most virtues were like that. People could take pride in how virtuous they were, but the fact was that as soon as virtue got expensive or inconvenient, it was amazing how fast it gave way to practical concerns.

It's plain that if I married you for brains I was plumb cheated.

I've known some bad people and some good people in my life, and it's the bad ones who live in fear, all the time. Cause they know their own hearts... And they think everyone else is just waiting to pull the same moves on them that they've got planned to pull on somebody else.

To be cut off from the land of the living, and yet not to be dead. How could I bear that?
That's how most men live, and don't even know it.

Never mind that the story had turned out to be lies and foolishness—there was always folks stupid enough to say, “Where there’s smoke there’s fire,” when the saying should have been, “Where there’s scandalous lies there’s always malicious believers and spreaders-around, regardless of evidence.

We can wash people in the water all we want, but we can never wash their parents out of their hearts.

It never occurred to you that they might be flattering you, because you don't lie.

What cannot be healed has been healed. What was lost forever has been found. Therefore let that which cannot be forgiven be forgiven.

A dreamer, a good man, a kind man who cared less for his plan than for the people in it.

The ways of love are strange and hard: the love you want is always barred; the love you have you want to change. The ways of love are hard and strange.

Here's my throat. I carry no weapon. You could have killed me at any time, even when I knew you were my enemy. Why did you need to deceive me into trusting you first? Were you afraid that death wouldn't bother me enough, unless I felt betrayed?

Knowing was better than not knowing. But not by much.

You know, if you hurt people enough, eventually they'll all call you whatever you want. Maker. King. Captain. Boss. Master. Holy One. Pick your title, you can beat people into calling you that. But you don't change yourself a bit. All you do is change the meanings of those words, so they all mean the same thing: Bully.

How strange it was that this other woman, this girl-child, should speak of her son so possessively, should speak of his future as if it were her own future.

“My religion,” said Ms. Brown, “is to try to falsify all hypotheses.”