Orson Scott Card Quotes

Changing the world is good for those who want their names in books. But being happy, that is for those who write their names in the lives of others, and hold the hearts of others as the treasure most dear.

You know how writers are... they create themselves as they create their work. Or perhaps they create their work in order to create themselves.

Madness, and then illumination.

We don't read novels to have an experience like life. Heck, we're living lives, complete with all the incompleteness. We turn to fiction to have an author assure us that it means something.

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

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

I taught you everything you know. But I didn't teach you everything I know.

Unemployment is capitalism's way of getting you to plant a garden.

And enough for me that when my hand touched your shoulder, you leaned on me; and when you felt me slip away, you called my name.

The future is a hundred thousand threads, but the past is a fabric that can never be rewoven.

He loved her, as you can only love someone who is an echo of yourself at your time of deepest sorrow.

Everybody dies. What matters is what you do between now and when it happens to you.

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

Every day people judge all other people. The question is whether they judge wisely.

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.

Do the gods of different nations talk to each other?...Is there some annual get-together where they compare each other's worshippers? Mine will bow their faces to the floor and trace woodgrain lines for me, says one. Mine will sacrifice animals, says another. Mine will kill anyone who insults me, says a third. Here is the question I think of most often: "Are there any who can honestly boast, My worshippers obey my good laws, and treat each other kindly, and live simple generous lives?

If pigs could vote, the man with the slop bucket would be elected swineherd every time, no matter how much slaughtering he did on the side.

In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him.

A duel is just two murders who agree to take turns trying to kill each other.

Everything possible to be believed is an image of truth." -Taleswapper

It was just him and me. He fought with honor. If it weren't for his honor, he and the others would have beaten me together. They might have killed me, then. His sense of honor saved my life. I didn't fight with honor . . . I fought to win.

Human beings are free except when humanity needs them.