Orson Scott Card Quotes
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We've seen the worst that men can do, pa, and been the worst that men can be. But that don't mean that someday we won't see the best, too. And if we can never be perfect after this, well, we can still be pretty good, can't we?
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'Don’t you think it’s ironic that you have no idea what you’re supposed to do,' said Verily, 'and yet so many people have gone to so much trouble to prevent you from doing it?'
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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.
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You're the only one that I would be glad to be close to forever, because all your secrets are bright and good and I love you for them.
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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.'
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He was wild the way a mistreated dog becomes wild, not because it loves freedom, but because it has lost trust.
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Religion isn't always pretty. Especially viewed from the outside, by an unbeliever.
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This is serious, and you gotta keep your mind open in case an idea comes along-you want there to be some room for it to fit in.
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'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?'
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In Vanya's family, silence had never meant surrender, only tactical retreat.
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There's some people who do things so bad it tears the fabric of the world, and then there's some people so sweet and good that they can feel it when the world gets torn. They see things, they know things, only they're so good and pure that they don't understand what it is that they're seeing.
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Physically plain people are perfectly able to see physical beauty in others, while people who are morally maimed are blind to goodness and decency. They honestly think it doesn't exist.Oh, they know it exists all right. They just never know which people have it.
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How could I hurt her? She'd have to love me before I could do that.
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I have no secret thoughts... Or rather, they're not secret because I've withheld them - if they're unknown, it's because no one asked.
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Haven't you ever seen a 3-year-old when he makes a foolish blunder? He looks at whatever child or adult is nearby and screams at him 'Look at what you made me do!' That's the moral universe that they always lived in.
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You always back off at the exact moment when you're about to tell the other person exactly what she needs to hear.
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'You're such a liar.''But I’m a beautiful liar, don’t you think?' She flashed her best smile at her friend.'I don’t understand what men see in women anyway,' her friend answered. 'Hexes or no hexes, as long as a woman has her clothes on a man can’t see what he’s interested in anyhow.'
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My hands are clean, but not because I wasn't prepared to bloody them.
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This is what love is, he thought. Doing what you don't want to do, because she needs it so much. And it isn't that bad. And it isn't that hard.
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''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.'
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'I always play with everybody,' said Honoré. 'It is my vocation. God put me on the earth to do with people what cats do to mice. Play with them, chew the last bit of life out of them, them pick them up in my mouth and drop them on people’s doorsteps. That is the business of literature.'
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Never mind that the story had turned out to be lies and foolishness-there was always folks stupid enough to say, 'Where there’s smoke there’s fire,' when the saying should have been, 'Where there’s scandalous lies there’s always malicious believers and spreaders-around, regardless of evidence.
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Wishful thinking gives false gods to people who hunger for gods, but those who yearn for a world with no gods are no less likely to fall victim to their own wishful thinking.
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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.