Orson Scott Card

"“I’m a terrible salesman,” he finally said. “I always tell the truth about what I’m selling, and then nobody buys it.”"

"“Everybody thinks they want to see the truth,” said Tenkswa-Tawa. “That’s one of the lies we tell ourselves.”"

"Programming is the Great Game. It consumes you, body and soul. When you're caught up in it, nothing else matters. When you emerge into daylight, you might well discover that you're a hundred pounds overweight, your underwear is older than the average first grader, and judging from the number of pizza boxes lying around, it must be spring already. But you don't care, because your program runs, and the code is fast and clever and tight. You won."

"La Tia was fearless, but that could mean either that she had no guile or that she had no conscience."

"A rustic setting always suggests fantasy; to suggest science fiction, you need sheet metal and plastic. You need rivets."

"That is the ultimate power, to stare death in the face and be unafraid."

"Arthur had heard Peggy say that she didn't wish for more comfortable furniture, because if the chairs were softer, company would be inclined to stay longer."

"Here's the secret that every successful software company is based on: You can domesticate programmers the way beekeepers tame bees. You can't exactly communicate with them, but you can get them to swarm in one place and when they're not looking, you can carry off the honey."

"“I see Alvin with a son. That what he want most.” “I see him with a woman,” said Rien. “That is what he miss the most.” “I see him kneeling by a child’s grave,” said Dead Mary. “That is what he fears the most.”"

"“He’s young,” she said. “We’ve all been guilty of that sin,” said Alvin. “And some never get over it.”"

"“I don’t plan to die for any cause,” said Jim Bowie. “Nor any man, excepting only myself. I know that ain’t noble, but it prolongs my days, which is philosophy enough for me.”"

"I was born with more power inside myself than I ever dreamed. But along with it there came no more sense than any other idiotic kid. Somewhere along in here I need to grow up into a man I can stand to live with. A man who doesn't just survive, but deserves to."

"The environment that nutures creative programmers kills management and marketing types - and vice versa."

"You are mine, but you are not mine. I am yours, but you hardly know it."

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

"I had seen the princess and let her lie there unawakened, because the happily ever after was so damnably much work."

"He was growing up. Soon he would be a man. He wondered what that would mean. Surely he could not have more required of him as an adult that had been required of him as a child. There could not be more."

"I will love you forever, he thought. I am lying, he thought, and this time he was right."

"If it isn't a wonderful story first, who cares how "important" it is?"

"In his sleep the voice of the land came to him like whispered lullabies. I did not choose you, said the land. I cannot speak except to those who hear me, and because it is in your nature to hear and listen, I spoke to you and lead you here to save me, save me, save me. Do you know the desert they will make of me? Encased in burning dust or layers of ice, either way I'll be dead. My whole purpose is to thrust life upward out of my soils, and feel the presence of living feet, and hear the songs of birds and the low music of the animals, growling, lowing, chittering, whatever voice they choose. That's what I ask of you, the dance of life, just once to make the man whose mother will teach him to be Quetzalcoatl and save me, save me, save me."

"He knew her too well to see her from the distance that pity requires. He loved her because he admired her. For bearing without complaint the burden the queen put on her. For still being gentle and loving when she had ample reason to be bitter."

"A dagger has only a single point, but a traitor cuts from anywhere."

"Are you the strongest of all men, so strong that you can be merciful to me, a weak woman? Here is the undoing of your strength: I am not a weak woman. I am not a little queen. And your mercy will be your undoing."

"Asking a man if he could be trusted was like asking an unwed girl if she was a virgin. The question mattered, but the asking of it was a gross insult."

"When he loved his bride it was not a queen he loved, but rather the girl as she might have been if she had not been destroyed in her childhood."

"A dreamer, a good man, a kind man who cared less for his plan than for the people in it."

"You're the sort of enemy your enemy must love."

"She did not send for him until she was afraid; she was not afraid until he undid her work; he did not undo her work until he was past loving her."

"I was the last to know what was happening to me. Or at least I was the last to know that I knew."

"It made me wonder if perhaps our ancestors' crimes were not in fact far more terrible than they claimed. After all, the only histories we possessed told their version of what happened, and in their accounts they were completely innocent."

"She thinks she's kept me. She would have kept me better if she had let me go now."

"Justice could be cruel, and crueler yet necessity, but mercy was the cruelest thing of all."

"They never noticed that he was in fact what they only pretended to be."

"Only a fool can't be fooled."

"I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration."

"There's a sort of rage a man feels when he's been deceived where he most trusted. It compares to no other anger."

"You are not what you seem. So many people have said that that I'm beginning to think that's precisely how I do seem. What is it I seem to be that you have now discovered that I'm not?"

"To me, the truth is what actually happened. Yet it is impossible to know anything approaching the whole truth about past events. Even the people living them could not possibly understand. That truth is always out of reach."

"He deserved to die except that nothing deserves death."

"I had never believed I had a soul until then, when it laid bare a hurt more deep than any part of me could bear."

"Keep your freedom, keep your immortality, but somewhere along the line I hope you figure out what you're living forever for. What noble purpose you mean to achieve. Because you're no good to anyone here, not even yourselves."

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

"For the first time I understood the haunting beauty of the song. It was the song of a killer who longed to die. It was the song of justice yearned for but not yet done."

"People's beliefs don't exist in isolation. Everyone's firmly held beliefs exert an enormous pressure on everyone else."

"You looked so intense. Whatever you were saying, you seemed to mean it, and it wasn't amusing at all. Started quite a fashion. People keep looking for purpose now. Complicates everything."

"But whether there's some grand design really matters little to me. My only hope was this: to see what might be, to believe that it should be, and then to do all I could to bring it to pass, whatever the cost."

"Even the devil gives some justice to his victims, when they're beyond all help."

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

"If you could stop the suffering and dying, and didn't stop it, then you are guilty. It is your fault. We kill no one. We do not let them kill us. We have nothing to do with them."

"I immediately felt so comfortable there. Or if not comfortable, at least willing to bear the discomforts because they fit the awkward places in my heart."