“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 from Enchantment
“The old tale of Sleeping Beauty might end happily in French or English, but he was in Russia, and only a fool would want to live through the Russian version of any fairy tale.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Enchantment
“Americans love to pick up, move on, start over. But instead of being somebody fresh and new, they become somebody lonely and lost, or, far too often these days, they become nobody at all, a machine for satisfying hunger, without loyalty or honor or duty.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Enchantment
“What good were the rules of time when the rules of magic contradicted them.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Enchantment
“Then they, too, lay down on mattresses stuffed with straw, hearing the music of the flies to buzz them to sleep, holding each other's hands as they dozed, thinking of the miracles by which love works its will in the world.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Enchantment
“Endurance, after all, was a kind of victory; a kind of heroism, too.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Enchantment
“Running was the way he dreamed. Having never been in control of his life, his idea of freedom was simply to break free. He dreamed of being at the mercy of the wind, carried aloft and blown here and there, a life of true randomness instead of always being part of someone else's purpose.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Enchantment
“Before we are citizens, he thought, we are children, and it is as children that we come to understand freedom and authority, liberty and duty. I have done my duty. I have bowed to authority. Mostly. And now, like Russia, I can set aside those burdens for a little while and see what happens.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Enchantment
“And it occurred to me that what we professors think of as a 'brilliant student' is nothing but a student who is enthusiastically converted to whatever idiotic ideas we've been teaching them.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Enchantment
“[Ruthie] ... if he was a good man, how could he leave me? So he must not be a good man. But if he isn't good, then why does it hurt so much to lose him?”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Enchantment
“In Russia you learn patience," said Ivan. "In America you learn action.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Enchantment
“You get used to being naked, that's the first thing that Ivan discovered. Crashing through thick brush with branches snagging at your bare skin, you stop worrying about who's looking and and spend your time trying to keep yourself from being flayed alive. He got shy again when they entered the village, but once he decided simply to let the gawkers gawk, he found himself much more interested in what he was seeing than what they were.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Enchantment
“Women always said things like that, and it made him crazy. 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. If, just once, the man could understand, really comprehend the whole of the conversation, then the perfect union between male and female would be possible. But instead men and women continue to cohabit, even to love each other, without ever quite crossing over the chasm of misunderstanding between them.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Enchantment
“Was that tragedy? Or was that comedy? Was there really any difference?”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Enchantment
“That’s the way of the world: The princess can disappear, but the witch is forever.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Enchantment
“You know what I was thinking? [Ruthie] got so excited when she was spouting this ahistorical countertextual nonsense, and I caught myself thinking, 'What an idiot her teacher must be,' and thinking about her teacher made me realize - the kind of excitement she was showing as she mindlessly spouted back the nonsense she learned in college, that's just like the excitement some of my own students show. And it occurred to me that what we professors think of as a 'brilliant student' is nothing but a student who is enthusiastically converted to whatever idiotic ideas we've been teaching them."
"Self-knowledge is a painful thing," said Esther. "To learn that your best students are parrots after all.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Enchantment
“Like running the hurdles. Work so hard, jump over every one, fast, high enough but no higher, because you can't afford to hang in the air. And then, when the race is over, you're dripping with sweat, either they beat you or you beat them ... and then a couple of guys come out and move the hurdles out of the way. Turns out they were nothing. All that work to jump over them, but now they're gone.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Enchantment
“Rock and roll is music," said Vanya.
"Prokofiev is music, Stravinski is music, Tchaikovski and Borodin and Rimski-Korsakov and even Rachmaninov, THEY are music. Rock and roll is smart boys with no respect, YOU are rock and roll.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Enchantment
“The prospect of sharing the rest of their lives held no dread for them. . . every word and movement between them carried their history and their future like background movement, shaping each moment even when they weren't aware of it.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Enchantment
“You’ve lost faith in yourself? Isn’t that rich? A god who’s become a self-atheist!”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Enchantment
“She loved him. He loved her. In the absence of understanding, that was as good a reason as any for living together and making babies and raising them up and throwing them out of the house and then going through the long slow decline together until one of them died and left the other alone again, understanding as little as ever about what their spouses really wanted, who they really were.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Enchantment
“The house always smells like good food,” said Piotr. “It’s the perfume of love.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Enchantment
“Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s court, my ass. American ingenuity amounted to squat in this place.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Enchantment
“And Bear absolutely refused to eat humans while they were still alive, with the feeble excuse that when they weren’t dead they made too much noise and moved around too much. To Yaga, that was just another proof of Bear’s laziness. Godhood was assigned to the most unworthy people.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Enchantment
“Ivan couldn’t think of a religion that was any damn good at making utter truthtellers out of its practitioners. Maybe the Quakers were truly plainspoken at one time, but even they managed to squeeze out a Richard Nixon after a few hundred years of suppressing their human propinquity for untruth.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Enchantment
“But as she looked at his matted fur, his blood-soaked muzzle and chest, she couldn’t help but think: If this winter god, this walking rug, this one-eyed whining bear is the magical guardian of Russia, then Russia is going to have a very troubled future.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Enchantment
“And it might also be that God had nothing to do with it, that it was just the moment that it would have happened anyway, whether she prayed or not.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Enchantment
“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 from Enchantment
“Vanya soon found that America might be an exciting place to arrive, but living there could become, in time, as boring as anything else.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Enchantment
“I’m only a god, Vanya, not an expert.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Enchantment
Orson Scott Card
Born place: in Richland, Washington, The United States
Born date August 24, 1951
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“The ultimate good of the gospel is seeing and savoring the beauty and value of God. God’s wrath and our sin obstruct that vision and that pleasure. You can’t see and savor God as supremely satisfying while you are full of rebellion against Him and He is full of wrath against you. The removal of this wrath and this rebellion is what the gospel is for. The ultimate aim of the gospel is the display of God’s glory and the removal of every obstacle to our seeing it and savoring it as our highest treasure. “Behold Your God!” is the most gracious command and the best gift of the gospel. If we do not see Him and savor Him as our greatest fortune, we have not obeyed or believed the gospel.”
― John Piper, quote from God Is the Gospel: Meditations on God's Love as the Gift of Himself
“After the plates are removed by the silent and swift waiting staff, General Çiller leans forward and says across the table to Güney, ‘What’s this I’m reading in Hürriyet about Strasbourg breaking up the nation?’
‘It’s not breaking up the nation. It’s a French motion to implement European Regional Directive 8182 which calls for a Kurdish Regional Parliament.’
‘And that’s not breaking up the nation?’ General Çiller throws up his hands in exasperation. He’s a big, square man, the model of the military, but he moves freely and lightly ‘The French prancing all over the legacy of Atatürk? What do you think, Mr Sarioğlu?’
The trap could not be any more obvious but Ayşe sees Adnan straighten his tie, the code for, Trust me, I know what I’m doing,
‘What I think about the legacy of Atatürk, General? Let it go. I don’t care. The age of Atatürk is over.’
Guests stiffen around the table, breath subtly indrawn; social gasps. This is heresy. People have been shot down in the streets of Istanbul for less. Adnan commands every eye.
‘Atatürk was father of the nation, unquestionably. No Atatürk, no Turkey. But, at some point every child has to leave his father. You have to stand on your own two feet and find out if you’re a man. We’re like kids that go on about how great their dads are; my dad’s the strongest, the best wrestler, the fastest driver, the biggest moustache. And when someone squares up to us, or calls us a name or even looks at us squinty, we run back shouting ‘I’ll get my dad, I’ll get my dad!’ At some point; we have to grow up. If you’ll pardon the expression, the balls have to drop. We talk the talk mighty fine: great nation, proud people, global union of the noble Turkic races, all that stuff. There’s no one like us for talking ourselves up. And then the EU says, All right, prove it. The door’s open, in you come; sit down, be one of us. Move out of the family home; move in with the other guys. Step out from the shadow of the Father of the Nation.
‘And do you know what the European Union shows us about ourselves? We’re all those things we say we are. They weren’t lies, they weren’t boasts. We’re good. We’re big. We’re a powerhouse. We’ve got an economy that goes all the way to the South China Sea. We’ve got energy and ideas and talent - look at the stuff that’s coming out of those tin-shed business parks in the nano sector and the synthetic biology start-ups. Turkish. All Turkish. That’s the legacy of Atatürk. It doesn’t matter if the Kurds have their own Parliament or the French make everyone stand in Taksim Square and apologize to the Armenians. We’re the legacy of Atatürk. Turkey is the people. Atatürk’s done his job. He can crumble into dust now. The kid’s come right. The kid’s come very right. That’s why I believe the EU’s the best thing that’s ever happened to us because it’s finally taught us how to be Turks.’
General Çiller beats a fist on the table, sending the cutlery leaping.
‘By God, by God; that’s a bold thing to say but you’re exactly right.”
― Ian McDonald, quote from The Dervish House
“To learn, you must be humble. You must be prepared to admit your ignorance. You must allow yourselves to be filled with the vital information presented to you via the skills and dedication of those who have gone before you down the long path to enlightenment.”
― Paula Brackston, quote from The Witch's Daughter
“Love is sharing; greed is hoarding. Greed only wants and never gives, and love knows only giving and never asks for anything in return; it is unconditional sharing.”
― Osho, quote from Love, Freedom, and Aloneness: The Koan of Relationships
“What is it to be born free and not to live free? What is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom? Is it a freedom to be slaves, or a freedom to be free, of which we boast?”
― Henry David Thoreau, quote from Life Without Principle
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