Orson Scott Card Quote #1
(Rigg) had often complained that all these languages were useless, and Father had only said, A man who speaks but one language understands none.
Orson Scott Card Quote #2
...What I depend on is a vigorous audience that can discover sweetness and light, beauty and truth, beyond the ability of the artist, on his own, to create them.
Orson Scott Card Quote #3
...You believe that the kind of story you want to tell might be best received by the science fiction and fantasy audience. I hope you're right, because in many ways this is the best audience in the world to write for. They're open-minded and intelligent. They want to think as well as feel, understand as well as dream. Above all, they want to be led into places that no one has ever visited before. It's a privilege to tell stories to these readers, and an honour when they applaud the tale you tell.
Orson Scott Card Quote #4
...you seemed to be listening to me, not to find out useful information, but to try to catch me in a logical fallacy. This tells us all that you are used to being smarter than your teachers, and that you listen to them in order to catch them making mistakes and prove how smart you are to the other students. This is such a pointless, stupid way of listening to teachers that it is clear you are going to waste months of our time before you finally catch on that the only transaction that matters is a transfer of useful information from adults who possess it to children who do not, and that catching mistakes is a criminal misuse of time.
Orson Scott Card Quote #5
[No single] explanation will ever contain the final answer for all time, for all hearers. There is always, ALWAYS more to learn.
Orson Scott Card Quote #6
[T]hat's the way of torturers of every age, to put the blame on the victim, especially when he strikes back.
Orson Scott Card Quote #7
[That wall] might be breached sometime in the future, but for now the only real conversation between them was the roots that had already grown low and deep, under the wall, where they could not be broken.
The most terrible thing, though, was the fear that the wall could never be breached, that in his heart Alai was glad of the separation, and was ready to be Ender's enemy. For now that they could not be together, they must be infinitely apart, and what had been sure and unshakable was now fragile and insubstantial; from the moment we are not together, Alai is a stranger, for he has a life now that will be no part of mine, and that means that when I see him we will not know each other.Orson Scott Card Quote #8
—No me digas «No, Ender». He tardado mucho tiempo en darme cuenta de ello, pero créeme, me odiaba, me odio. Y todo se reduce a esto: en el momento en el que entiendo a mi enemigo, en el momento en el que le entiendo lo suficientemente bien como para derrotarle, entonces, en ese preciso instante, también le quiero. Creo que es imposible entender realmente a alguien, saber lo que quiere, saber lo que cree, y no amarle como se ama a sí mismo. Y entonces, en ese preciso momento, cuando le quiero...
—Le vences.
—No, no lo entiendes. Le destruyo. Hasta que le resulta imposible volver a hacerme daño. Lo trituro más y más hasta que no existe.Orson Scott Card Quote #9
«Linkeree does what he likes. He likes to be alone and think his own thoughts. No one is hurt by it.» Sara said, «Jason said that we are one people. Linkeree is saying he does not want to be part of us, and if he is not part of us then we are all less than we were.» They were both very wise. It would be so much easier for Kapock if they had only agreed with each other.
Orson Scott Card Quote #10
A good commander, thought Ender, doesn't have to make stupid threats.
Orson Scott Card Quote #11
A Great Rabbi stands, teaching in the marketplace. It happens that a husband finds proof that morning of his wife's adultery, and a mob carries her to the marketplace to stone her to death.
There is a familiar version of this story, but a friend of mine - a Speaker for the Dead - has told me of two other Rabbis that faced the same situation. Those are the ones I'm going to tell you.
The Rabbi walks forward and stands beside the woman. Out of respect for him the mob forbears and waits with the stones heavy in their hands. 'Is there any man here,' he says to them, 'who has not desired another man's wife, another woman's husband?'
They murmur and say, 'We all know the desire, but Rabbi none of us has acted on it.'
The Rabbi says, 'Then kneel down and give thanks that God has made you strong.' He takes the woman by the hand and leads her out of the market. Just before he lets her go, he whispers to her, 'Tell the Lord Magistrate who saved his mistress, then he'll know I am his loyal servant.'
So the woman lives because the community is too corrupt to protect itself from disorder.
Another Rabbi. Another city. He goes to her and stops the mob as in the other story and says, 'Which of you is without sin? Let him cast the first stone.'
The people are abashed, and they forget their unity of purpose in the memory of their own individual sins. ‘Someday,’ they think, ‘I may be like this woman. And I’ll hope for forgiveness and another chance. I should treat her as I wish to be treated.’
As they opened their hands and let their stones fall to the ground, the Rabbi picks up one of the fallen stones, lifts it high over the woman’s head and throws it straight down with all his might it crushes her skull and dashes her brain among the cobblestones. ‘Nor am I without sins,’ he says to the people, ‘but if we allow only perfect people to enforce the law, the law will soon be dead – and our city with it.’
So the woman died because her community was too rigid to endure her deviance.
The famous version of this story is noteworthy because it is so startlingly rare in our experience. Most communities lurch between decay and rigor mortis and when they veer too far they die. Only one Rabbi dared to expect of us such a perfect balance that we could preserve the law and still forgive the deviation.
So of course, we killed him.
-San Angelo
Letters to an Incipient HereticOrson Scott Card Quote #12
a lot of human behavior was really acting out our responses to dangers long past.
Orson Scott Card Quote #13
A man without a wife and babies is a menace to civilization... One bachelor is an irritation. Ten thousand bachelors are a war.
Orson Scott Card Quote #14
A person is what he says and does; that's how you learn whether his reputation was earned or manufactured.
Orson Scott Card Quote #15
A regime that wraps itself in the flag of truth fears truth most of all, for if its story is falsified to the slightest degree, its authority is gone.
Orson Scott Card Quote #16
Achilles acted as if he had already won, and because the other kids followed him, he had.
Orson Scott Card Quote #17
Achilles might be a good papa to the family, but he was also a killer, and he never forgives.
Poke knew that, though. Bean warned her, and she knew it, but she chose Achilles for their papa anyway. Chose him and then died for it. She was like that Jesus that Helga preached about in her kitchen while they ate. She died for her people. And Achilles, he was like God. He made people pay for their sins no matter what they did.
The important thing is, stay on the good side of God. That's what Helga teaches, isn't it? Stay right with God.
I'll stay right with Achilles. I'll honor my papa, that's for sure, so I can stay alive until I'm old enough to go out on my own.Orson Scott Card Quote #18
After twenty-five years of marriage, they could see each other clearly without having to look.
Orson Scott Card Quote #19
Alai saw the tears but had the grace not to say so. They're fartheads, Ender, they won't even let you take anything you own.
Ender grinned and didn't cry after all. Think I should strip and go naked?
Alai laughed, too.
On impulse Ender hugged him, tight, almost as if he were Valentine. He even thought of Valentine then and wanted to go home. I don't want to go, he said.
Alai hugged him back. I understand them, Ender. You are the best of us. Maybe they in a hurry to teach you everything.
They don't want to teach me everything, Ender said. I wanted to learn what it was like to have a friend.
Alai nodded soberly. Always my friend, always the best of my friends, he said. Then he grinned. Go slice up the buggers.
Yeah, Ender smiled back.
Alai suddenly kissed Ender on the cheek and whispered in his ear, Salaam.Orson Scott Card Quote #20
All dreams. If there was love or pity for him, it was only in his dreams.
Orson Scott Card Quote #21
All these uses a valid; all these reading of the book are correct. For all these readers have placed themselves inside this story, not as spectators, but as participants, and so have looked at the world of Ender's Game, not with my eyes only, but also with their own.
Orson Scott Card Quote #22
America's intellectual community has never been very bright. Or honest. They're all sheep, following whatever the intellectual fashion of the decade happens to be. Demanding that everyone follow their dicta in lockstep. Everyone has to be open-minded and tolerant of the things they believe, but God forbid they should ever concede, even for a moment, that someone who disagrees with them might have some fingerhold of truth.
Orson Scott Card Quote #23
America. The enemy. The rival. The land of jeans and rock and roll, of crime and capitalism, of poverty and oppression. Of home and freedom.
Orson Scott Card Quote #24
Among my most prized possessions are words that I have never spoken.
Orson Scott Card Quote #25
And 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.
Orson Scott Card Quote #26
And the voice of God was in the whirlwind after all, said Thor
Orson Scott Card Quote #27
And then he thought: Is this how idiots rationalize their stupidity to themselves?
Orson Scott Card Quote #28
And then the queen wept with all her heart. Not for the cruel and greedy man who had warred and killed and savaged everywhere he could. But for the boy who had somehow turned into that man, the boy whose gentle hand had comforted her childhood hurts, the boy whose frightened voice had cried out to her at the end of his life, as if he wondered why he had gotten lost inside himself, as if he realized that it was too, too late to get out again.
Orson Scott Card Quote #29
Andrew said you were the best person he ever knew.
He reached that conclusion before he saw me raise three barbarian children to adulthood. I understand your mother has six.
Right.
And you're the oldest.
Yes.
That's too bad. Parents always make their worst mistakes with the oldest children. That's when parents know the least and care the most, so they're more likely to be wrong and also more likely to insist that they're right.Orson Scott Card Quote #30
Another oral exam, huh?' Peter said.
'Shut up, Peter,' said Valentine.
'You should relax and enjoy it,' said Peter. 'It could be worse.'
'I don't know how.'
'It could be an anal exam.
0 comments:
Post a Comment