Orson Scott Card Quotes

I'm nobody's child.
You're mine now. Not my child, but mine, to miss you when you go, to look out for you, to hope you'll be careful.

“I don’t have to be a gentleman,” said Balzac. “I am an artist.”

Where do you draw the line between a humble man who knows his own weaknesses but tries to act out virtues he hasn't quite mastered yet, and a proud man who pretends to have those virtues without the slightest intention of acquiring them?

To expect wickedness from human beings is the best way I know of to avoid surprises. And when I am surprised, it's always pleasantly.

Very bad thing, killing little boy. But maybe Red man knows about whisky-Red, very thirsty, making crazy. Not like killing man to take his house or his woman or his land, like White man all the time.

Faithfulness had taken me by surprise. I wondered how long the phase would last.

That's what survival means, for me. I thought it was a matter of staying alive, but it isn't. Nobody lives forever anyway. It's how you're remembered. It's what your children thought of you, what they think of you after you're dead. That's survival.

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.

Heroes and victims are the product of the mood they were in when opportunity came or when circumstances were at their worst.

I wanted your songs.
You wanted my songs more than you wanted my happiness. So you took my happiness, and stole my songs.

We're both damaged property, I guess.
Plenty of time for renovation.

I acted like a human male. When I act like a human male it doesn't make me less human, it just makes me less female.

What Alvin figured out was that when you're Making, you don't use people like tools. You don't wear them out to achieve your purpose. You wear yourself out helping them achieve theirs. You wear yourself out teaching and guiding, persuading and listening to advice and letting folks persuade you, when it happens they're right.

I took the leap, yes, but I didn't like the ledge where I landed — I fought the bear, I kissed the princess, but now I don't want to be king. Well, where in the fairy tales did it ever say Cinderella had to like being queen?

Such fools they were in Battle School, to let so few girls in. It left the boys completely helpless against a woman when they returned to Earth.