Orson Scott Card Quotes
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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.
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'Hey, you’re getting to be almost worth how much it costs to feed you.''Good thing, ’cause I got no plan to eat less.'
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I will love you forever, he thought. I am lying, he thought, and this time he was right.
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How could you tell, when utter honesty and cynical manipulation would each account completely for the things she said and did?
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You aren't the kind of guy who takes the law into his own hands. You left the law in other hands and it screwed you over pretty badly.
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All children are manipulators.
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Marriage is about banality. Its purpose is banality, to create an environment of surpassing safety and predictability for young children to grow up in, the foundation of life, the root of inner peace.
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'I don’t have to be a gentleman,' said Balzac. 'I am an artist.'
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When we intended to enjoy being cruel, we must transform our victim into either a beast or a god.
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The funny thing was, you see, that Mike Fink didn't think of himself as a murderer. He thought of life as a contest, and dying was what happened to those who came out second best, but it wasn't the same as murder, it was a fair fight.
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He isn't insane, he's simply as trapped in his life as I am in mine. That makes us friends.
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'What kind of stupid tale is that, when we just have to look at each other to know it isn’t true?''It has problems, I admit.'
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If there's no place in the universe for a man to resist the thieves of freedom and still be called a good man, then I don't think there is any good or evil in the universe.
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First we try to preserve ourselves, until we see that we can't. Then we try to preserve our children, until we see we can't. Then we act to preserve our kin, and then our village or tribe, and when we see we can't preserve even them, then we act in order to preserve our memory. And if we can't do that, what is left?
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'Our savior will resurrect us,' said Peggy, 'but I haven’t noticed that Christians end up any less dead at the end of life than heathens.'
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Show him who I am, so he will pity me instead of fearing me. And then we can turn pity into compassion, and compassion into understanding, and understanding into affection, and affection into love, and love into life, the life of our children, the life of the new self we will become together.
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God, our genes, our environment, or some stupid programmer keying in code at an ancient terminal - there's no way free will can ever exist if we as individuals are the result of some external cause.
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I began to suspect that the ultimate sacrifice isn't death after all; the ultimate sacrifice is willingly bearing the fullest penalty for your own actions.
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The education that prepared me was my general education classes, which I tried to avoid when I was a stupid undergraduate, but which gave me the foundation of general knowledge that makes a career as a writer possible.
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The most important training, though, is to experience life as a writer, questioning everything, inventing multiple explanations for everything. If you do that, all the other things will come; if you don't, there's no hope for you.
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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.
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'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.
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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.
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'Are you all right, sir?' asked Hezekiah.'Just fighting over old battles in my mind,' said John. 'It’s the problem with age. You have all these rusty arguments, and no quarrel to use them in. My brain is a museum, but alas, I’m the only visitor, and even I am not terribly interested in the displays.'