Orson Scott Card

“We've decided that your birthday present will be a car", said Marion.Danny was touched. "But the thing I can't figure out is, why would I need a new car?""You can't very well gate a girl to the movies, Danny," Leslie replied."I think you're overlooking the biggest point here," said Danny. "I don't need a CAR so I can date. I need a GIRL.”

“The other four houses yielded jewelry, wallets, credit cards, laptops, iPads and Kindles, even a couple of expensive looking vases...."You didn't do anything stupid like writing IOUs and signing your name, did you?""That's an excellent idea," said Danny. He stepped back through the gate, waited for a count of five, and then returned to Eric. Now Eric was standing, and when he saw Danny he visibly sagged with relief. "What kind of moron are you?""The fun-loving kind," said Danny. "I'm not an idiot, of course I didn't sign my name to IOUs.""Good.""I signed yours.”

“And you're the one who thought it was too risky to go through a gate.""That's why we're such a great team," said Eric, "We're both completely stupid about different things.”

“What could go wrong... Doing some stupid impulsive thing that caused the death of drowthers was practically a family tradition.”

“That's the difference between life and art, of course. Life has no frames, no curtains, no beginnings and no endings.”

“The univers is statistically more likely to be ironic than not,”

“There are hundreds of possible causes for every effect, and a hundred possible effects for every cause.”

“Never true,' Old Ben would say. 'Useful- now, there's something. Your mind might make a connection that is useful. But true is another matter. True implies that you have found a connection that exists independent of your apprehension of it, that would exist whether you noticed it or not. And I must say that I have never seen such a connection in my life. There are times when I suspect there are no such connections, that all links, bonds, ties, and similarities are creations of thought and have no substance.”

“I understand that you believe that it works,' said Thrower patiently. 'But everything in the world is either science or miracles. Miracles came from God in the ancient times, but those times are over. Today if we wish to change the world, it isn't magic but science that will give us our tools.”

“the cruelest, narrowest, most evil people will always rise to power because they'll always be the ones most willing to wrap themselves in the crescent flag and murder people in God's name.”

“It was an unbroken network of causality leading back to the first human who wasn't a chimp. And farther back, to the coalescing of the planets around the sun. If you wish to call that God, go ahead.”

“Nobody ever completely means what they say. Even when they think they're telling the truth, there's always something hidden behind their words.”

“Like Santa Claus. You adults pretend he doesn't exist, but we know that he really does.”

“I have begged and she hasn't answered. The whales are swimming deep inside me and she doesn't help. I need help. All the monsters in the world are inside me instead of outside me. I've been tricked and trapped and they are inside my walls not outside my walls inside with me and she won't help me. When I stop thinking about a muscle it shakes. When I stop thinking about a fear it leaps at me. I'm drowning but the lake keeps getting deeper and deeper and deeper and I don't know how to get out the walls go up forever and I can't climb over and I can't break through and she won't talk to me.”

“But how to fight with singers, how to win a gift that could only be given freely—those were questions whose answers could not be found.”

“all living things are manipulated as long as there is a will, it is bent and twisted constantly. Only the dead are allowed the luxury of freedom, and then only because they want nothing, and therefore can't be thwarted.”

“We're all tools in somebody's kit. But that doesn't mean we can't make tools out o other people. Or figure our interesting things to use ourselves for.”

“Take me home, he said silently to Graff. In my dream you said you loved me. Take me home”

“Mazer, i don't want to keep dreaming these things. I'm afraid to sleep. I keep thinking of things i don't want to remember. My whole life keeps playing out as if i were a recorder and someone else wanted to watch the most terrible parts of my life”

“Wishful thinking gives false gods to people who hunger for gods, but those who yearn for a world with no gods are no less likely to fall victim to their own wishful thinking.”

“Which of them, then, was more detestable? The one who was loathsome by nature, or the one who wanted to be loathsome but hadn't enough ambition to excel at it>”

“When Chveya was seven years old she had understood perfectly how the world worked. Now she was eight, and there were some questions.”

“Nothing that is new is ever new twice. While things that are true are still true the next time; truer, in fact, because they have been tested, they have been tasted, and they are always ripe, always ready...”

“Thank you for this, Peter. For dry eyes and silent weeping. You taught me how to hide anything I felt. More than ever, I need that now.”

“You want to beat Peter?" she asked"No," he answered "Beat the buggers. Then come home and see who notices Peter Wiggen anymore. Look him in the eye when all the world loves and reveres you. That'll be defeat in his eyes, Ender, thats how you win""You don't understand" he said"Yes i do""No you don't. I don't want to beat Peter""Then what do you want?""I want him to love me”

“She likes us,” said Umbo. “I know, I could feel it too,” said Rigg. “She’s really glad to have us here. I think she loves us like her own children.” “Whom she murdered and cut up into the stew.” “They were delicious.”

“You killed more people than anybody in history.""Be the best at whatever you do, that's what my mother always told me.”

“Do you think we're making a mistake?" snapped the Bishop."Not at all," said Dom Cristao. "I think we've taken a step toward something truly magnificent. But humankind almost never forgives true greatness.""Fortunately," said the Bishop, "humankind isn't the judge that matters. And now I intend to pray for this boy, since medical science has obviously reached the boundary of its competence.”

“It's the most charming thing about humans. You are all so sure that the lesser animals are bleeding with envy because they didn't have the good fortune to be born Homo sapiens.”

“We spend our lives guessing at what's going on inside everybody else, and when we happen to get lucky and guess right, we think we 'understand.' Such nonsense. Even a monkey at a computer will type a word every now and then.”

“I don't give up and I don't wear down. I'm not just rock, I'm diamond.”

“But it was not the boyish grin she had known when he bounded along the low-gravity inner corridors of Battle School. This smile had weariness in it, and old fears long mastered but still present. It was the smile of wisdom.”

“For it is in the millions of small melodies that the truth of history is always found, for history only matters because of the effects we see or imagine in the lives of the ordinary people who are caught up in, or give shape to, the great events.”

“It will hurt." said Petra. "But let's make the most of what we have, and not let future pain ruin present happiness.”

“I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it.”

“Sickness and healing are in every heart; death and deliverance in every hand.”

“we're all trying to decide wether your scores are up there are a miricule or a mistake.a habit”

“I'm putting you in Dink Meeker's toon. From now on, as far as you're concerned, Dink Meeker is God.""Then who are you?""The personnel officer who hired God.”

“yesterday someone sent a message that was signed GOD! bernard said.really? dap said. i didn't know he was signed onto the system”

“it was all your genes that made us geniuses, mom. said peter. we sure didn't get any from dad.i heard that. father said, not looking up from the news that was being displayed on the table while he ateit would've been wasted if you hadn't”

“nobody ever wrote to me saying"you know ender's game was a pretty good book, but you know what it really needs a n introduction!".....so be assured the novel stands on its own, and if you skip this intro and go straight to the story, i not only won't stand in your way i'll even agree with you!”

“There's always moral instruction whether the writer inserts it deliberately or not. The least effective moral instruction in fiction is that which is consciously inserted. Partly because it won't reflect the storyteller's true beliefs, it will only reflect what he BELIEVES he believes, or what he thinks he should believe or what he's been persuaded of. But when you write without deliberately expressing moral teachings, the morals that show up are the ones you actually live by. The beliefs that you don't even think to question, that you don't even notice-- those will show up. And that tells much more truth about what you believe than your deliberate moral machinations.”

“The enemy gate is down.”

“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.”

“If you did not in your own mind distinguish between useful and erroneous information, then you were not learning at all, you were merely replacing ignorance with false belief, which was no improvement.”

“Where ideas are real and reality is shadow.”

“the seed of doubt was there, and it stayed, and every now and then sent out a little root. It changed everything, to have that seed growing. It made Ender listen more carefully to what people meant, instead of what they said. It made him wise.”

“...he would have been lost except he started out lost and when you start out completely lost, it's hard to get loster.”

“If human beings are all monsters, why should I sacrifice anything for them?""Because they are beautiful monsters..., And when they live in a network of peace and hope, when they trust the world and their deepest hungers are fulfilled, then within that system, that delicate web, there is joy. That is what we live for, to bind the monsters together, to murder their fear and give birth to their beauty.”

“The difference between raman and varelse is not in the creature judged, but in the creature judging. When we declare an alien species to be raman, it does not mean that they have passed a threshold of moral maturity. It means that we have.”