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'I don’t have to be a gentleman,' said Balzac. 'I am an artist.'
Orson Scott Card -
That was the most terrible thing that a woman could to a decent man: look vulnerable and ask him for mercy. If he refused her he'd be denying all his instincts as a provider and protector.
Orson Scott Card
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You're the sort of enemy your enemy must love.
Orson Scott Card -
Last night Alvin just got mad, which she said would only guarantee that he’d stay stupid.
Orson Scott Card -
A dreamer, a good man, a kind man who cared less for his plan than for the people in it.
Orson Scott Card -
The doctrine he was going to be teaching, starting tonight, was not the sort of ideology that would stir souls; no one would die for this religion. It would only attracts converts by promising a return to old tradition and by seeming to be the religion of the future.
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.'
Orson Scott Card -
Folks always seemed to think that as long as they didn’t know about something bad, it wasn’t happening, so whoever told them actually caused it to be true.
Orson Scott Card
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Only a fool can't be fooled.
Orson Scott Card -
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.
Orson Scott Card -
He could afford to be generous, since he didn’t have to pay for it himself. Most virtues were like that. People could take pride in how virtuous they were, but the fact was that as soon as virtue got expensive or inconvenient, it was amazing how fast it gave way to practical concerns.
Orson Scott Card -
Andrew Jackson neatly resolved the issue by walking into congress and placing his hand on the Bible they kept there as a reminder of all the virtues they worked so hard to get the voters to believe they possessed.
Orson Scott Card -
You know, if you hurt people enough, eventually they’ll all call you whatever you want. Maker. King. Captain. Boss. Master. Holy One. Pick your title, you can beat people into calling you that. But you don’t change yourself a bit. All you do is change the meanings of those words, so they all mean the same thing: Bully.
Orson Scott Card -
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.
Orson Scott Card
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You spend your whole life grieving for those who haven’t died yet.
Orson Scott Card -
I was the last to know what was happening to me. Or at least I was the last to know that I knew.
Orson Scott Card -
'Everybody thinks they want to see the truth,' said Tenkswa-Tawa. 'That’s one of the lies we tell ourselves.'
Orson Scott Card -
Heroes and victims are the product of the mood they were in when opportunity came or when circumstances were at their worst.
Orson Scott Card -
The fear of death in the one place was not as strong as another kind of fear, the fear of a world gone crazy, a place where anything could happen, where nothing could be trusted, where nothing was certain. A terrible place.
Orson Scott Card -
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.
Orson Scott Card
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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.
Orson Scott Card -
Peggy chose her words to be true, and therefore beautiful, and therefore good.
Orson Scott Card -
Very bad thing, killing little boy. But maybe Red man knows about whisky-Red, very thirsty, making crazy. Not like killing man to take his house or his woman or his land, like White man all the time.
Orson Scott Card -
You are mine, but you are not mine. I am yours, but you hardly know it.
Orson Scott Card