Orson Scott Quotes

Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.

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.

In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them.... I destroy them.

Ethan Wyeth: I hope you're thirsty." Gideon Wyeth:"Why?" Ethan: "Cause your dumb and ugly, but I can do something about thirsty.

This is how humans are: We question all our beliefs, except for the ones that we really believe in, and those we never think to question.

I don't care if I pass your test, I don't care if I follow your rules. If you can cheat, so can I. I won't let you beat me unfairly - I'll beat you unfairly first. - Ender

I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.

Remember, the enemy's gate is down.

It's called civilization. Women invented it, and every time you men blow it all to bits, we just invent it again.

Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along―the same person that I am today.

Sometimes lies were more dependable than the truth.

When you really know somebody you can’t hate them. Or maybe it’s just that you can’t really know them until you stop hating them.

Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf.

No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one's life is nothing. Even the most evil of men and women, if you understand their hearts, had some generous act that redeems them, at least a little, from their sins.

I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it.

There are times when the world is rearranging itself, and at times like that, the right words can change the world.

Early to bed and early to rise," Mazer intoned, "makes a man stupid and blind in the eyes.

Ender Wiggin isn't a killer. He just wins—thoroughly.

So the whole war is because we can't talk to each other.

Among my most prized possessions are words that I have never spoken.

I also remembered that you were beautiful." "Memory does play tricks on us." "No. Your face is the same, but I don't remember what beautiful means anymore.

You're a monster. Thanks. Does this mean I get a raise? No, just a medal. The budget isn't inexhaustable.

Life is full of grief, to exactly the degree we allow ourselves to love other people.

The wise are not wise because they make no mistakes. They are wise because they correct their mistakes as soon as they recognize them.

Peter, you're twelve years old. I'm ten. They have a word for people our age. They call us children and they treat us like mice.

In my view, suicide is not really a wish for life to end.' What is it then?' It is the only way a powerless person can find to make everybody else look away from his shame. The wish is not to die, but to hide.

I need you to be clever, Bean. I need you to think of solutions to problems we haven't seen yet. I want you to try things that no one has ever tried because they're absolutely stupid.

I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not "true" because we're hungry for another kind of truth: the mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all: our own self-story. Fiction, because it is not about someone who lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself. --From the Introduction

He could see Bonzo's anger growing hot. Hot anger was bad. Ender's anger was cold, and he could use it. Bonzo's was hot, and so it used him.

I will remember this, thought Ender, when I am defeated. To keep dignity, and give honor where it's due, so that defeat is not disgrace. And I hope I don't have to do it often.

Love is finding that the things you like best about yourself are not in you at all, but in the person who completes you

Fiction, because it is not about somebody who actually lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself.

Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.

She worked her toes into the sand, feeling the tiny delicious pain of the friction of tiny chips of silicon against the tender flesh between her toes. That's life. It hurts, it's dirty, and it feels very, very good.

Human beings may be miserable specimens, in the main, but we can learn, and, through learning, become decent people.

We have to go. I'm almost happy here.

Human beings are free except when humanity needs them. Maybe humanity needs you. To do something. Maybe humanity needs me—to find out what you're good for. We might both do despicable things, Ender, but if humankind survives, then we were good tools.

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

Home is anywhere that you know all your friends and all your enemies.

Changing the world is good for those who want their names in books. But being happy, that is for those who write their names in the lives of others, and hold the hearts of others as the treasure most dear.

Happiness is not a life without pain, but rather a life in which the pain is traded for a worthy price.

We're all trying to decide whether your scores up there are a miracle or a mistake." "A habit.

I've watched through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and I tell you he's the one.

We don't read novels to have an experience like life. Heck, we're living lives, complete with all the incompleteness. We turn to fiction to have an author assure us that it means something.

Madness, and then illumination.

This emotion I'm feeling now, this is love, right?" "I don't know. Is it a longing? Is it a giddy stupid happiness just because you're with me?" "Yes," she said. "That's influenza," said Miro. "Watch for nausea or diarrhea within a few hours.

My needs are simple and few, thought Valentine. Food. Clothing. A comfortable place to sleep. And no idiots. But of course a world with no idiots would be lonely. If she herself were even allowed there.

Soldiers can sometimes make decisions that are smarter than the orders they've been given.

Please don't disillusion me. I haven't had breakfast yet.

As long as you keep getting born, it's all right to die sometimes

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.

Since when do you have to tell the enemy when he has won

I'm crazy," said Ender. "But I think I'm OK.

I'm putting you in Dink Meeker's toon. From now on, as far as you're concerned, Dink Meeker is God." "Then who are you?" "The personnel officer who hired God.

The story is one that you and I will construct together in your memory. If the story means anything to you at all, then when you remember it afterward, think of it, not as something I created, but rather as something that we made together.

I taught you everything you know. But I didn't teach you everything I know.

Music isn't just a pleasure, a transient satisfaction. It's a need, a deep hunger; and when the music is right, it's joy. Love. A foretaste of heaven. A comfort in grief. Is it too much to think that perhaps God speaks to us sometimes through music? How, then, could I be so ungrateful as to refuse the message?

We thought we were the only thinking beings in the universe, until we met you, but never did we dream that thought could arise from the lonely animals who cannot dream each other's dreams.

An enemy, Ender Wiggin," whispered the old man. "I am your enemy, the first one you've ever had who was smarter than you. There is no teacher but the enemy. No one but the enemy will tell you what the enemy is going to do. No one but the enemy will ever teach you how to destroy and conquer. Only the enemy shows you where you are weak. Only the enemy tells you where he is strong. And the rules of the game are what you can do to him and what you can stop him from doing to you. I am your enemy from now on. From now on I am your teacher.

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.

He loved her, as you can only love someone who is an echo of yourself at your time of deepest sorrow.

And then he thought: Is this how idiots rationalize their stupidity to themselves?

At last he came to a door, with these words in glowing emeralds: THE END OF THE WORLD He did not hesitate. He opened the door and stepped through.

I will never hurt you. I will always help you. If you are hungry Ill give you my food. If you are frightened I am your friend. I love you now. And love does not end.

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

For children love is a feeling; for adults, it is a decision. Children wait to learn if their love is true by seeing how long it lasts; adults make their love true by never wavering from their commitment.

You killed more people than anybody in history." "Be the best at whatever you do, that's what my mother always told me.

Personal affection is a luxury you can have only after all your enemies are eliminated. Until then, everyone you love is a hostage, sapping your courage and corrupting your judgment.

One mind can think only of its own questions; it rarely surprises itself.

Every person is defined by the communities she belongs to.

You’re not a human being until you value something more than the life of your body. And the greater the thing you live and die for the greater you are.

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.

And enough for me that when my hand touched your shoulder, you leaned on me; and when you felt me slip away, you called my name.

The future is a hundred thousand threads, but the past is a fabric that can never be rewoven.

Knowledge is just opinion that you trust enough to act upon.

Parents always make their worst mistakes with their 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.

We're like the wicked witch. We promise gingerbread, then eat the little brats alive.

I didn't want to see you." "They told me." "I was afraid that I'd still love you." "I hoped that you would.

Being young is an 18 year prison sentence for a crime your parents committed. But you do get time off for good behavior.

No book, however good, can survive a hostile reading.

The opposite of the happy ending is not actually the sad ending--the sad ending is sometimes the happy ending. The opposite of the happy ending is actually the unsatisfying ending.

the seed of doubt was there, and it stayed, and every now and then sent out a little root. It changed everything, to have that seed growing. It made Ender listen more carefully to what people meant, instead of what they said. It made him wise.

Sickness and healing are in every heart; death and deliverance in every hand.

The enemy gate is down.

If you listen very carefully, you can hear the good fairy come in the night and leave our assignment for tomorrow.

None of us could be happy for long, doing nothing.

What else should you be? Human beings didn't evolve brains in order to lie around on lakes. Killing's the first thing we learned. And a good thing we did, or we'd be dead, and the tigers would own the earth.

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.

You want to beat Peter?" she asked "No," he answered "Beat the buggers. Then come home and see who notices Peter Wiggen anymore. Look him in the eye when all the world loves and reveres you. That'll be defeat in his eyes, Ender, thats how you win" "You don't understand" he said "Yes i do" "No you don't. I don't want to beat Peter" "Then what do you want?" "I want him to love me

Ender nodded. It was a lie, of course, that it wouldn’t hurt a bit. But since adults always said it when it was going to hurt, he could count on that statement as an accurate prediction of the future. Sometimes lies were more dependable than the truth.

But when it comes to human beings, the only type of cause that matters is final cause, the purpose. What a person had in mind. Once you understand what people really want, you can't hate them anymore. You can fear them, but you can't hate them, because you can always find the same desires in your own heart.

She will look at you as women look at men, and she will judge you as a woman judge men...not on the strength of their arguments, and not in their cleverness or prowess in battle, but rather on the force of their character, the intensity of their passion, their strength of soul, their compassion, and...ah, this above all...their conversation.

If you give orders and explain nothing, you might get obedience, but you'll get no creativity. If you tell them your purpose, then when your original plan is shown to be faulty, they'll find another way to achieve your goal. Explaining to your men doesn't weaken their respect for you, it proves your respect for them.

To reach out to you when I'm in need, and to try to be here for you when you need me back. And to feel such tenderness when I look at you that I want to stand between you and all the world: and yet also to lift you up and carry you above the strong currents of life; and at the same time, I would be glad to stand always like this, at a distance, watching you, the beauty of you.

Be proud, Bonito, pretty boy. You can go home and tell your father, Yes, I beat up Ender Wiggin, who was barely ten years old, and I was thirteen. And I had only six of my friends to help me, and somehow we managed to defeat him, even though he was naked and wet and alone--Ender Wiggin is so dangerous and terrifying it was all we could do not to bring two hundred.

If only we could have talked to you, the hive-queen said in Ender's words. But since it could not be, we ask only this: that you remember us, not as enemies, but as a tragic sisters, changed into foul shape by fate or God or evolution. If we had kissed, it would have been the miracle to make us human in each other's eyes. Instead we killed each other. But still we welcome you now as guestfriends. Come into our home, daughters of Earth; dwell in our tunnels, harvest our fields; what we cannot do, you are now our hands to do for us. Blossom, trees; ripen, fields; be warm for them, suns; be fertile for them, planets: they are our adopted daughters, and they have come home.

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.

That night Demosthenes published a scathing denunciation of the population limitation laws. People should be allowed to have as many children as they like, and the surplus population should be sent to other worlds, to spread mankind so far across the galaxy that no disaster, no invasion could ever threaten the human race with annihilation. "The most noble title any child can have," Demosthenes wrote, "is Third.

Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along--the same person that I am today. I never felt that I spoke childishly. I never felt that my emotions and desires were somehow less real than adult emotions and desires. And in writing _Ender's Game_, I forced the audience to experience the lives of these children from that perspective--the perspective in which their feelings and decisions are just as real and important as any adult's. ... _Ender's Game_ asserts the personhood of children, and those who are used to thinking of children in another way ... are going to find _Ender's Game_ a very unpleasant place to live.

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 Heretic