The collection / 328 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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328 results · Page 2 of 14Play this collection ▷

01Undated

I'll have that someday, thought Peter. Someone who'll kiss me good-bye at the door. Or maybe just someone to put a blindfold over my head before they shoot me. Depending on how things turn out.

Orson Scott Card / quote

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02Undated

It was not right, thought Han Fei-tzu, for his wife to die before him: her ancestor-of-the-heart had outlived her husband. Besides, wives should live longer than husbands. Women were more complete inside themselves. They were also better at living in their children. They were never as solitary as a man alone.

Orson Scott Card / quote

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03Undated

I carry the seeds of death within me and plant them wherever I linger long enough to love.

Orson Scott Card / quote

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04Undated

someone's senta loving notein lines of returning geeseand as the moon fillsmy western chamberas petals danceover the flowing streamagain I think of youthe two of usliving a sadnessaparta hurt that can't be removedyet when my gaze comes downmy heart stays up

Orson Scott Card / quote

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05Undated

Faith doesn't mean you never doubt. It only means you never act upon your doubts.

Orson Scott Card / quote

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06Undated

You know how writers are... they create themselves as they create their work. Or perhaps they create their work in order to create themselves.

Orson Scott Card / quote

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07Undated

When you have a good romance, find ways to make their lives miserable and hellish...Do you think 'Titanic' would have been so popular if they had both lived? Not a prayer.

Orson Scott Card / quote

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08Undated

There's always moral instruction whether the writer inserts it deliberately or not. The least effective moral instruction in fiction is that which is consciously inserted. Partly because it won't reflect the storyteller's true beliefs, it will only reflect what he BELIEVES he believes, or what he thinks he should believe or what he's been persuaded of. But when you write without deliberately expressing moral teachings, the morals that show up are the ones you actually live by. The beliefs that you don't even think to question, that you don't even notice-- those will show up. And that tells much more truth about what you believe than your deliberate moral machinations.

Orson Scott Card / quote

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09Undated

As often I have been a science fiction writer writing science fiction for the community of science fiction readers, I am also, for good or ill, an American writing American literature to an American audience. Most fundamentally, though, I am a human being writing human literature to a human audience.

Orson Scott Card / quote

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10Undated

I think you don't grow up until you stop worrying about other people's purposes or lack of them and find the purposes you believe in for yourself.

Orson Scott Card / quote

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11Undated

Someday stars will wind down or blow up. Someday death will cover us all like the water of a lake and perhaps nothing will ever come to the surface to show that we were ever there. But we WERE there, and during the time we lived, we were alive. That's the truth - what is, what was, what will be - not what could be, what should have been, what never can be.

Orson Scott Card / quote

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12Undated

When you have faith in something a lot of other people believe then you a member of the church" said Ceas, "When you have faith in something nobody believes, then you a complete wacko

Orson Scott Card / quote

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13Undated

[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

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14Undated

I know that you are wise. When you hear a true story, there is a part of you that responds to it regardless of art, regardless of evidence…You believe that the story is true, because you responded to it from that sense of truth deep within you. But that sense of truth does not respond to a story's factuality...[rather] to a story's causality - whether it faithfully shows the way the universe functions.

Orson Scott Card / quote

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15Undated

You frighten me, when you say there isn't time.""I don't see why. Christians have been expecting the imminent end of the world for millennia.""But it keeps not ending.""So far, so good.

Orson Scott Card / quote

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16Undated

You were baptized?""My sister told me that yes, Father baptized me shortly after birth. My mother was a Protestant of a faith that deplored infant baptism, so they had a quarrel about it." The Bishop held out his hand to lift the Speaker to his feet. The Speaker chuckled. "Imagine. A closet Catholic and a lapsed Mormon, quarreling over religious procedures that they both claimed not to believe in.

Orson Scott Card / quote

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17Undated

You were the one who threatened us with an Inquisitor," the Bishop reminded him. With a smile.The Speaker's smile was just as chilly. "And you're the one who told the people I was Satan and they shouldn't talk to me.

Orson Scott Card / quote

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18Undated

And the voice of God was in the whirlwind after all, said Thor

Orson Scott Card / quote

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19Undated

When you have wisdom that another person knows that he needs, you give it freely. But when the other person doesn't yet know that he needs your wisdom you keep it to yourself. Food only looks good to a hungry man.

Orson Scott Card / quote

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20Undated

It’s there in your own Bible, Carlotta. Two trees—knowledge and life. You eat of the tree of knowledge, and you will surely die. You eat of the tree of life, and you remain a child in the garden forever, undying.

Orson Scott Card / quote

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21Undated

If you try and lose then it isn't your fault. But if you don't try and we lose, then it's all your fault.

Orson Scott Card / quote

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22Undated

But in the military you don't get trusted positions just because of your ability. You also have to attract the notice of superior officers. You have to be liked. You have to fit in with the system. You have to look like what the officers above you think that officers should look like. You have to think in ways that they are comfortable with.The result was that you ended up with a command structure that was top-heavy with guys who looked good in uniform and talked right and did well enough not to embarrass themselves, while the really good ones quietly did all the serious work and bailed out their superiors and got blamed for errors they had advised against until they eventually got out.That was the military.

Orson Scott Card / quote

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23Undated

It's as if every conversation with a woman was a test, and men always failed it, because they always lacked the key to the code and so they never quite understood what the conversation was really about.

Orson Scott Card / quote

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24Undated

Miro, I'm so sorry. I always felt such pity for you humans because you could only think of one thing at a time and your memories were so imperfect and . . . now I realize that just getting through the day without killing somebody can be an achievement."It gets to be a habit. Most of us manage to keep our body count quite low. It's the neighborly way to live.

Orson Scott Card / quote

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