Orson Scott Card Quotes

In order to learn, one must change one's mind.

When you have a good romance, find ways to make their lives miserable and hellish...Do you think 'Titanic' would have been so popular if they had both lived? Not a prayer.

Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to fill the roles given you by good people, by people who love you.

Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf.

Writing sessions can last an hour or sixteen hours, depending on how it's going.

This is how humans are: We question all our beliefs, except for the ones that we really believe in, and those we never think to question.

Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.

There is no society that does not highly value fictional storytelling. Ever.

The best thing about my job, though, is stopping at the end of the day and rejoining the human universe.

Human beings are free except when humanity needs them.

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.

I have to win this now, and for all time, or I’ll fight it every day and it will get worse and worse.

Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender.

My college training was primarily in theatre, with an eye to becoming a director, actor, or producer.

So I want to ask you a hypothetical question. My favorite kind. Next to rhetorical ones. I can nap equally well through either kind.

A library is the first step of a thousand journeys, portal to a thousand worlds.

Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day.

One bachelor is an irritation. Ten thousand bachelors are a war.

If you lay a hand on me I'll ram your testicles so far up inside your abdomen it'll take a heart surgeon to get them out.

It is a weak man who blames his failures on the strength of others.

It's the middle class that feels the luxury of being able to have causes.

Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books.

Only stupid men trying to seem smart need to be with dumb women. Only weak men trying to look strong are attracted to compliant women.

I realized that everything important in sci-fi showed up in the magazines first. It's the proving ground for new writers and new ideas.

My favourite all-time work of fiction: Lord of the Rings. My favourite all-time nonfiction book: Guns, Germs, and Steel. Ask me again next week, you'll get a different answer.

It's the teachers, they're the enemy. They get us to fight each other, to hate each other.

I have never resisted the lord in my life, and I never will. But I'm not so hungry for dialogue with him that I have to make up his part as well as my own.

...the thing with brothers is, you're supposed to take turns being the keeper. Sometimes you get to sit down and be the brother who is kept.

As long as you keep getting born, it's alright to die some times.

We're all trying to decide whether your scores up there are a miracle or a mistake." "A habit.

Home is anywhere that you know all your friends and all your enemies.

So the whole war is because we can't talk to each other.

Soldiers can sometimes make decisions that are smarter than the orders they've been given.

Anything can become a children's book if you give it to a child...Children are actually the best (and worst) audience for literature because they have no patience with pretence.

Life is full of grief, to exactly the degree we allow ourselves to love other people.

I will remember this, thought Ender, when I am defeated. To keep dignity, and give honor where it's due, so that defeat is not disgrace. And I hope I don't have to do it often.

If words can be lethal weapons, I must provide them with an arsenal.

The essence of training is to allow error without consequence.

We have to go. I'm almost happy here.

Peter, you're twelve years old. I'm ten. They have a word for people our age. They call us children and they treat us like mice.

Since when do you have to tell the enemy when he has won?

I've watched through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and I tell you he's the one.

'I could kill you like this,' Peter whispered. 'Just press and press until you're dead'.

Your work is first, learning is first, winning is everything because without it there is nothing.

He's not a killer. He just wins... Thoroughly

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

You frighten me, when you say there isn't time." "I don't see why. Christians have been expecting the imminent end of the world for millennia." "But it keeps not ending." "So far, so good.

Love is finding that the things you like best about yourself are not in you at all, but in the person who completes you

I don't care if I pass your test, I don't care if I follow your rules. If you can cheat, so can I. I won't let you beat me unfairly - I'll beat you unfairly first. - Ender

That's how it goes within a family. You think you know each other so well, and so you don't bother hardly getting to know each other at all.