Top 500 Orson Scott Card Quotes (2024 Update)
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451. “The snake began to unweave itself from the rug again, only this time Ender did not hesitate. He stepped on the head of the snake and crushed it under his foot. It writhed and twisted under him, and in response he twisted and ground it deeper into the stone floor. Finally it was still. Ender picked it up and shook it, until it unwove itself and the pattern in the rug was gone. Then, still dragging the snake behind him, he began to look for a way out.”

— Orson Scott Card

452. “I am a creature of chemicals.”

— Orson Scott Card

453. “The only true vision comes not from God but from the inmost recesses of the human mind.”

— Orson Scott Card

454. “All the stories are fictions. What matters is which fiction you believe.”

— Orson Scott Card

455. “We were all fated to die, and so it is good that at least we can be sure our deaths today might bring about a good end, might make the world a better place.”

— Orson Scott Card

456. “I’m just saying things never get so bad we can’t do something to make them better.”

— Orson Scott Card

457. “Short stories are designed to deliver their impact in as few pages as possible. A tremendous amount is left out, and a good short story writer learns to include only the most essential information.”

— Orson Scott Card

458. “I’ve learned all I’m ever going to learn from you.”

— Orson Scott Card

459. “The great forces of history were real, after a fashion. But when you examined them closely, those great forces always came down to the dreams and hungers and judgments of individuals.”

— Orson Scott Card

460. “The Maker is the one who is part of what he makes.”

— Orson Scott Card

461. “That’s what Ender has to understand. There really is evil in the world, and wickedness, and every brand of stupidity. There’s meanness and heartlessness and... I don’t even know which of them is me.” – Hyrum Graff.”

— Orson Scott Card

462. “Child-rearing today was so complicated. You always had to think of what they’d say on television later.”

— Orson Scott Card

463. “I know, you’ve been here a year, you think these people are normal. Well, they’re not. WE’RE not. I look in the library, I call up books on my desk. Old ones, because they won’t let us have anything new, but I’ve got a pretty good idea what children are, and we’re not children. Children can lose sometimes, and nobody cares. Children aren’t in armies, they aren’t COMMANDERS, they don’t rule over forty other kids, it’s more than anybody can take and not get crazy.”

— Orson Scott Card

464. “They aren’t having a mental conversation between people with different thought processes. All their thoughts are present, together, at once.”

— Orson Scott Card

465. “But always a giant, long before his body showed it.”

— Orson Scott Card

466. “What an unfriendly country,” said Noxon. “Different time, different place,” said Wheaton. “We think we’re a very welcoming country. Generous and kind. Unless we don’t like your language or the way you look.”

— Orson Scott Card

467. “My college training was primarily in theatre, with an eye to becoming a director, actor, or producer.”

— Orson Scott Card

468. “History’s got no bows on it, only frayed ends of ribbons and knots that can’t be untied.”

— Orson Scott Card

469. “In a way she actually preferred Peter to other people because of this. He always acted out of intelligent self-interest.”

— Orson Scott Card

470. “Famous at high school is like being employee of the month at the sanitation department.”

— Orson Scott Card

471. “Evil isn’t best served by equally evil servants.”

— Orson Scott Card

472. “Time to repay old humiliations, is that it, Bean? ‘Of course,’ Ender said contemptuously. ‘I’m not as close to the floor as you are.”

— Orson Scott Card

473. “Those eyes had seen people weep, and had cared, and had hurt them again anyway. It’s a look that no human eyes should ever have.”

— Orson Scott Card

474. “He kissed her and killed her then dumped her body in the river.”

— Orson Scott Card

475. “Human: That’s stupid. Isn’t there grass on both sides?”

— Orson Scott Card

476. “As the proverb said, “Think in the morning, Act in the noon, Eat in the evening, Sleep in the night.” Too late for thinking now. Too early for eating.”

— Orson Scott Card

477. “If it isn’t a wonderful story first, who cares how “important” it is?”

— Orson Scott Card

478. “No, the hurts of the mind were too strange, too invisible, too magical to hope for the same kind of tolerance and help from even the best of people. It frightens me, thought DeAnne. Why should I expect others to be better than I am?”

— Orson Scott Card

479. “What a waste of time to be posthumously famous.”

— Orson Scott Card

480. “As a species, we have evolved to survive. And the way we do it is by straining and straining and, at last, every few generations, giving birth to genius. The one who invents the wheel. And light. And flight. The one who builds a city, a nation, an empire...”

— Orson Scott Card

481. “He had lots of deaths, but that was OK, games were like that, you died a lot until you got the hang of it.”

— Orson Scott Card

482. “How clever of me. I have found such a pathway into hell that I can never get back out.”

— Orson Scott Card

483. “As for me,” said Alvin, “I’m neutral on lying, seeing as how there’s times when the truth just hurts people.” “I’m none too fanatic about telling the truth, myself,” said the woman. “For instance, I believe every girl ought to grow up in the firm belief that she’s clever and pretty, and every boy that he’s strong and good-hearted. In my experience, what starts out as a fib turns into a hope and if you keep it up long enough, it starts to be mostly true.”

— Orson Scott Card

484. “We’re going to make him the best military commander in history. And then put the fate of the world on his shoulders.”

— Orson Scott Card

485. “When there aren’t any smart decisions, I suppose you just have to pick the stupid decision you like best.”

— Orson Scott Card

486. “If you read to your kids you’ll make readers out of them, partly because they’ll associate reading with good parent time.”

— Orson Scott Card

487. “It is possible to have words come to your mind, and still refrain from speaking them aloud.”

— Orson Scott Card

488. “Don’t press her,” said Cooper. “If someone decides to leave something unsaid, my experience is that everyone is happier if they don’t insist on his saying it.”

— Orson Scott Card

489. “The story itself, the true story, is the one that the audience members create in their minds, guided and shaped by my text, but then transformed, elucidated, expanded, edited, and clarified by their own experience, their own desires, their own hopes and fears.”

— Orson Scott Card

490. “I think Bonzo died. I dreamed about it last night. I remembered the way he looked after I jammed his face with my head. I think I must have pushed his nose back into his brain. The blood was coming out of his eyes. I think he was dead right then.”

— Orson Scott Card

491. “It is the essence of dignity to pretend to desire what you cannot prevent.”

— Orson Scott Card

492. “A minor request,” said Mazer. “Let’s not refer to it as the training cage. ‘Training’ sounds laborious and regimented. Soldiers groan at the word. These men joined the IF to fight, sir. Let’s call it the Battle Room.”

— Orson Scott Card

493. “If he did not speak his tale, it grew dank and musty, it shrank inside him, while with the telling the tale stayed fresh and virtuous.”

— Orson Scott Card

494. “I have lived in the only decades I could have lived in, and hope to live through at least a few more.”

— Orson Scott Card

495. “People always go. Always. They always believe they can make a better life than in the old world.”

— Orson Scott Card

496. “We don’t admit it to ourselves, not until the very moment of death, but in that moment, we see all life before us and we understand how we chose, every day of our lives, the manner of our death.”

— Orson Scott Card

497. “You own nothing?”

— Orson Scott Card

498. “The stone loves you. Don’t you see it? Hasn’t it shown you its love all your life?”

— Orson Scott Card

499. “Buut how to fight with singers, how to win a gift that could only be given freely- those were questions whose answers could not be found.”

— Orson Scott Card

500. “Writing sessions can last an hour or sixteen hours, depending on how it’s going.”

— Orson Scott Card