“Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Ender's Game
“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.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Ender's Game
“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 from Ender's Game
“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 ”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Ender's Game
“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”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Ender's Game
“Remember, the enemy's gate is down.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Ender's Game
“I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Ender's Game
“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.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Ender's Game
“Sometimes lies were more dependable than the truth.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Ender's Game
“Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Ender's Game
“Early to bed and early to rise," Mazer intoned, "makes a man stupid and blind in the eyes.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Ender's Game
“There are times when the world is rearranging itself, and at times like that, the right words can change the world.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Ender's Game
“I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Ender's Game
“Ender Wiggin isn't a killer. He just wins—thoroughly.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Ender's Game
“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.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Ender's Game
“You're a monster.
Thanks. Does this mean I get a raise?
No, just a medal. The budget isn't inexhaustable.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Ender's Game
“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.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Ender's Game
“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.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Ender's Game
“So the whole war is because we can't talk to each other.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Ender's Game
“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.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Ender's Game
“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.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Ender's Game
“Fiction, because it is not about somebody who actually lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Ender's Game
“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. ”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Ender's Game
“Human beings may be miserable specimens, in the main, but we can learn, and, through learning, become decent people.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Ender's Game
“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.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Ender's Game
“We have to go. I'm almost happy here.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Ender's Game
“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, quote from Ender's Game
“I've watched through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and I tell you he's the one.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Ender's Game
“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. ”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Ender's Game
“We're all trying to decide whether your scores up there are a miracle or a mistake."
"A habit. ”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Ender's Game
Orson Scott Card
Born place: in Richland, Washington, The United States
Born date August 24, 1951
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“He was tired and full of shame, and if Ernestino and the others wouldn’t brave this rain, he would go it alone, he would find some place to sing, some place where, anonymous and numbed by drink, he could sing until he had forgotten everything.”
― Anne Rice, quote from Cry to Heaven
“The nymphs in green? Delightful girls.’ ‘It is clear you have been a great while at sea, to call those sandy-haired coarse-featured pimply short-necked thick-fingered vulgar-minded lubricious blockheads by such a name. Nymphs, forsooth. If they were nymphs, they must have had their being in a tolerably rank and stagnant pool: the wench on my left had an ill breath, and turning for relief I found her sister had a worse; and the upper garment of neither was free from reproach. Worse lay below, I make no doubt.”
― Patrick O'Brian, quote from H.M.S. Surprise
“...en route to the final destination, which was always to get trashed, wasted, hammered, crunked up, bombed, wrecked, sloshed, fried, flapjacked, fucked-up, or get plainlong fucked, laid, drained, get some ass, get some head, some skull, a lube job, get your oil changed, get some brown sugar, quiff, goo, pussy...”
― Tom Wolfe, quote from I am Charlotte Simmons
“I’m surprised you holy people talk to me,” Wolfie said suddenly, “after what I done.” He swayed there a moment, frowning. “As a Catholic priest, I must accept men’s frailty. And as a European I am too old and tired to expend emotion upon matters I can do nothing about.”
― Peter Matthiessen, quote from At Play in the Fields of the Lord
“People are not always very tolerant of the tears which they themselves have provoked.”
― Marcel Proust, quote from The Captive & The Fugitive
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A Spot of BotherBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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