Orson Scott Card Quotes

What is this thing between women, like men are a joke that women all told each other long ago but men never get it.

Deep inside himself, in a place he didn't often go, where he kept the things he didn't like to think about but dared not forget, he knew that [she] was still alive somewhere, and somehow she was watching what he did, or at least looking in on him from time to time.

Love is random; fear is inevitable.

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

It was always from the love of strong women that he had found whatever joy had been granted him in his life.

You just refuse to leave them alone until they change their minds. Of their own free will.

You are sure your enemy is stupid because he doesn't do things as you would do them. It will make you careless, and your enemy will surprise you.

They don't know how to watch things. They don't know how to see anything but what they expect to see.

The older you get, the more you believe in God, whatever face he wears.

First we try to preserve ourselves, until we see that we can't. Then we try to preserve our children, until we see we can't. Then we act to preserve our kin, and then our village or tribe, and when we see we can't preserve even them, then we act in order to preserve our memory. And if we can't do that, what is left?

We are the actors and the audience as well, all of us. And the critics. We are also the critics.

How is clean, painless nonexistence any worse than clean, painless death?

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

What sort of arrogance did she have, even to imagine reaching back into the past and making changes? Who am I, she thought, if I dare to answer prayers intended for the gods?

His vices were the vices of his time and culture, but his virtues transcended the milieu of his life.