Orson Scott Card

"Love can't conquer anything. Love can't make a scholar into a warrior. Loving her can't make her love me."

"Like running hurdles. Work so hard, jump over every one, fast, high enough but no higher, because you can't afford to hang in the air. And then, when the race is over, you're dripping with sweat, either they beat you or you beat them... and then a couple of guys come out and move the hurdles out of the way. Turns out they were nothing. All that work to jump over them, but now they're gone."

"To say what's in their hearts, regardless of shame. It doesn't change what they feel, what they want. It just helps... loosen them up."

"You are so intent that you believe only what you believe that you believe, that you remain utterly blind to what you really believe without believing that you believe it."

"I don't know a soul who doesn't maintain two separate lists of doctrines — the ones that they believe that they believe; and the ones that they actually try to live by."

"She knew that her feelings toward Bean were completely different. No such dreams and fantasies. Just a sense of complete acceptance. She belonged with Bean, not the way that a wife belonged with a husband or, God forbid, a girlfriend with a boyfriend, but rather way the left hand belonged to the right. They simply fit. Nothing exciting about it, nothing to write home about. But it could be counted on."

"“Part of the test,” said Sillain, “is seeing how well you obey orders.” “Then I fail,” said John Paul."

"He was only six, but he already knew that he hated it when he had to do what other people wanted, even when he knew that they were wrong. He didn't want to be a soldier. He didn't want to kill. He didn't want to die. He didn't want to obey stupid people."

"That reminded John Paul of what Andrew had said when he was teaching him to play chess. “You have to think ahead, the next move, the next move, the next move, to see where it’s all going to lead.” John Paul understood the principle as soon as Andrew explained it. But he stopped playing chess anyway, because he didn't care what happened to little plastic figures on a board of sixty-four squares."

"Why did people get so upset when somebody mentioned dying? Did they think that if they didn't mention it, it would skip a few people and leave them alive forever?"

"There are many steps on the continuum between controlling something and doing nothing at all."

"“My religion,” said Ms. Brown, “is to try to falsify all hypotheses.”"

"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."

"“Are all Polish men as arrogant and intrusive and rude as you?” “Few measure up to my standards, but most try.”"

"What does it matter if, by following my heart, I also fulfill someone else's plan?"

"Even in cultures where marriages are arranged by parents, you're never actually forbidden to fall in love with your mate."

"It (i. e., advertising) was like horoscopes—enough blind stabs and some of them are bound to strike a target."

"“Am I hired?” “There is no legal way you can get me out of paying that much of my taxes.” “On the contrary, Mr. Wiggin. The tax laws are designed to trick people into paying more than they have to. That way the rich who are in the know get to take advantage of drastic tax breaks, while those who don’t have such good connections and haven’t yet found an accountant who does are tricked into paying ludicrously higher amounts.”"

"“You can afford me,” said Jane. “I’m cheap and you’re rich.”"

"Here's the bottom line. I promise you it's entirely legal, and he can't touch you for it. This is how the laws are written. They're designed to protect the fortunes of people as rich as you, while throwing the main tax burden on people in much lower brackets."

"“Did they program brattiness into you?” “That’s a trait I developed for myself,” she said. “Do you like it?”"

"My hands are clean, but not because I wasn't prepared to bloody them."

"If I have to choose between an omnipotent God who leaves the world in this condition, and a God who has only a little bit of power but really cares and tries to make things better, I'll take you every time. Go on playing God, Hyrum. You're not bad at it. Sometimes you kind of get it right."

"Such fools they were in Battle School, to let so few girls in. It left the boys completely helpless against a woman when they returned to Earth."

""And you actually were cuddly," said Carn. "No offense, but you were spunky." "If that's your word for 'bratty little asshole,' said Dink mildly."

"I don't care how loyal you think you're going to be, Dink. It's not in you. You're a brat and you always will be. So admit what a lousy follower you are, and go ahead and LEAD."

"'Waterloo was won,'" quoted Rackham, "'on the playing fields of Eton.'" "What the hell does that mean?" asked Carn Carby. "You never even went to Eton." "It was an analogy," said Rackham. "If you hadn't spent your entire childhood playing war games, you'd actually know something. You're all so uneducated."

"I've seen Australia and I've lived on an asteroid and I'd take the asteroid."

"Nafai knew the rule: when a man acts like a child, he's boyish, and everyone's delighted; when a boy acts the same way, he's childish, and everyone tells him to be a man."

"I think that I say those things that make people so angry, not because I really mean them, but because I simply thought of a clever way to say them. It's a kind of art, to think of the perfect way to say an idea, and when you think of it then you have to say it, because words don't exist until you say them." "A pretty feeble kind of art, Nyef, and I say you should give it up before it gets you killed."

"Why won't anyone ever answer my questions?" "Because you never stop asking them and especially because you keep asking them even when it's clear that nobody knows the answers." "Well, how do I know that they don't know the answer unless I ask?"

"How could you disguise your own thoughts so even you didn't know what you were thinking?"

"Here's my throat. I carry no weapon. You could have killed me at any time, even when I knew you were my enemy. Why did you need to deceive me into trusting you first? Were you afraid that death wouldn't bother me enough, unless I felt betrayed?"

"Permanence was always an illusion, and love was just the disguise that lovers wore to hide the death of their union from each other for a while."

"I will not be tamed, only persuaded. I will not be coerced or led blindly or tricked or bullied - I am willing only to be convinced. If you don't trust your own basic goodness enough to tell me what you're trying to do... Then you're confessing your own moral weakness and I'll never serve you."

"Wouldn't it have been better to change humanity so it no longer desired to destroy itself?"

"Not that human beings need to be violent in order to be human, but if you ever lose the will to control, the will to destroy, then it must be because you choose to lose it. My role was not to force you to be gentle and kind; it was to keep you alive while you decided for yourselves what kind of people you wanted to be."

"You think my apology means I'm weak. But it doesn't. It means I am trying to learn how to be strong."

"I was forgetting how it really was, I was remembering it through common, ordinary eyes, I was remembering it as the boy I was before, but now I remember that it wasn't me being weak or me being naked, or anything else that I should be ashamed of."

"I have no way of knowing that your story is not true — but you have no way of knowing that my story isn't true. So I will choose the one that I love. I will close the one that, if it's true, makes this reality one worth living in. I'll act as if the life I hope for is real life, and the life that disgusts me — your life, your view of life — is the lie."

"It was not love at all, really, but rather a yearning for the honor and respect of the other men that held them. Pride, then... Indeed, all their connection with each other at this moment was tied up with the respect they felt they were earning by their actions."

"Keep me alive. Keep me alive long enough for me to conquer the animal within myself. Long enough for me to learn to partner myself with a woman who is better and stronger than me. Long enough for me to reconcile myself with my brothers. Long enough to be as good a man as my father, and as good as my mother, too."

"Coincidence is just the word we use when we have not yet discovered the cause."

"How does he do it? How does he master people without bluster or bullying? How does he make people fear him or love him, not in spite of his ruthlessness but because of it?"

"We are all fools when one wise man appears."

"Stop threatening me... I've lived in terror and I've come out of it. Kill me or not, torture me or not, it doesn't matter to me. Just decide what to do."

"Will I be coming to you as husband or a child? A partner or a student?"

"Money only buys the illusion of power. Real power is in the force of will — will strong enough that others bend to it for its own sake, and follow it willingly. Power that is won through deception will evaporate under the hot light of truth."

"If I wanted to doubt then I could doubt endlessly. But at some point a person has to stop questioning and act, and at that point you have to trust something to be true. You have to act as if something is true, and so you choose the thing you have the most reason to believe in, you have to live in the world that you have the most hope in."

"They gave me powers of thought and memory far beyond anything natural evolution would have given me, but that doesn't give them the right to decide the meaning of my life as if I were some dream. I decide the meaning. If my life is a dream then it's my dream, I'm the dreamer."