Quote #1102

I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration. (from the introduction to the story collection Future on Fire, where he discusses writers he considers to be hacks.)

More from Orson Scott Card

  1. Tell the story plainly and clearly.
  2. If it isn't a wonderful story first, who cares how 'important' it is? (Ibid.)
  3. You need to remember that what you're dealing with here is the ideas I had when I was 16 that I'm putting in my fiction now.
  4. Among my most prized possessions are the words that I have never spoken.
  5. If you write like James Joyce, you will have an audience of twenty. The other nineteen - besides your mother, because your father won't rea…
  6. Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf. Survival first, then happiness as we can manage it.
  7. Only stupid men trying to seem smart need to be with dumb women. Only weak men trying to look strong are attracted to compliant women.
  8. It's the middle class that feels the luxury of being able to have causes.

All Orson Scott Card quotes