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This man, though, was of that rare type that knew what he wanted but didn't want anything badly enough to demand it or beg for it or hurt anyone else in the process of getting it.
Orson Scott Card -
The others are even more likely to obey their god.Which is? It dangles between their legs.
Orson Scott Card
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I don't know you, ma'am, and apparently I'm expected to die for you.
Orson Scott Card -
A duel is just two murderers who agree to take turns trying to kill each other.
Orson Scott Card -
That is the ultimate power, to stare death in the face and be unafraid.
Orson Scott Card -
Where do you draw the line between a humble man who knows his own weaknesses but tries to act out virtues he hasn’t quite mastered yet, and a proud man who pretends to have those virtues without the slightest intention of acquiring them?
Orson Scott Card -
'Did they program brattiness into you?''That’s a trait I developed for myself,' she said. 'Do you like it?'
Orson Scott Card -
Wouldn't it have been better to change humanity so it no longer desired to destroy itself?
Orson Scott Card
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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 -
And then he realized that he could never make anything out of the Unmaker, could never make the Unmaker do or be anything because it was only Undoing and Unbeing. It wasn’t the Unmaker he needed to call to, it was all the living things around him, the trees, the grass, the earth, the air itself. It was the greensong that he needed to restore.
Orson Scott Card -
'Calvin, what kind of trouble are you planning to make?''No trouble at all,' said Calvin, annoyed. 'Why do you think I want to cause trouble?''Because you are awake.'
Orson Scott Card -
You are sure your enemy is stupid because he doesn't do things as you would do them. It will make you careless, and your enemy will surprise you.
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
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Maybe she just wanted to be the one to decide when things happened between them. Then again, what women didn't want to decide that?
Orson Scott Card -
Your father cares as little as we do. It's just that he tends to despair, while we are full of hope.
Orson Scott Card -
He didn’t know if he had the right or not. Didn’t know if he was taking like a Red man, just what the land offered, or stealing like a White man, murdering whatever it pleased him to kill.
Orson Scott Card -
I interpreted all you did as weakness - but I should have known that it was wisdom and strength, freely shared with all of us, even the ones who don't deserve it.
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.
Orson Scott Card -
And he wanted a wife. He wanted to raise children. He wanted to prove that goodness wasn’t beaten into children, that fear was not the fount from which virtue flowed. He wanted to be able to gather his family in his arms and know that not one of them dreaded the sight of him, or felt the need to lie to him in order to have his love.
Orson Scott Card
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When both parties are lying and they both know the other party's lying, it comes powerful close to being the same thing as telling the truth.
Orson Scott Card -
'I was ordained,' said the preacher. 'No one ordains artists. They ordain themselves.'Just as Taleswapper had expected. The preacher retreated to authority as soon as he feared his ideas could not stand on their own merit. Reasonable argument was impossible when authority became the arbiter.
Orson Scott Card -
We are the actors and the audience as well, all of us. And the critics. We are also the critics.
Orson Scott Card -
'I don’t hold with prophets,' said Alvin. 'Near as I can tell, they end up just as dead as the next man.'
Orson Scott Card