1,174 Quotes by Orson Scott Card

Then the raft rocked, and she turned to see Ender calmly crushing the life out of the wasp with one finger. “These are a nasty breed,” Ender said. “They sting you without waiting to be insulted first.

The bones are hard and by themselves seem dead and stony, but by rooting into and pulling against the skeleton, the rest of the body carries out all the motions of life.

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.

He had lots of deaths, but that was OK, games were like that, you died a lot until you got the hang of it.

Human: That’s stupid. Isn’t there grass on both sides?

Alai suddenly kissed Ender on the cheek and whispered in his ear, “Salaam.” Then, red-faced, he turned away and walked to his own bed at the back of the barracks. Ender guessed that the kiss and the word were somehow forbidden. A suppressed religion, perhaps. Or maybe the word had some private and powerful meaning for Alai alone.

Nobody ever completely means what they say. Even when they think they’re telling the truth, there’s always something hidden behind their words.

We don’t use the word ‘intelligence’ with software. We regard that as a naive idea. We say that it’s ‘complex.’ Which means that we don’t always understand what it’s doing.

But most of those to whom Ender’s Game feels most important are those who, like me, feel themselves to be perpetually outside their most beloved communities, never able to come inside and feel confident of belonging.