51 Orson Scott Card Quotes on Growth

Orson Scott Card quotes on growth

10. The danger that keeps me just a little frightened with every book I write, however, is that I'll overreach myself once too often and try to write a story that I'm just plain not talented or skilful enough to write. That's the dilemma every storyteller faces. It is painful to fail. But it is far sadder when a storyteller stops wanting to try.

13. At first he thought he felt bad because he was afraid of leading an army, but it wasn't true. He knew he'd make a good commander. He felt himself wanting to cry. He hadn't cried since the first few days of homesickness after he got here. He tried to put a name on the feeling that put a lump in his throat and made him sob silently, however much he tried to hold it down. He bit down on his hand to stop the feeling, to replace it with pain. It didn't help.

23. There is no teacher but the enemy.

39. He can never come to believe that anyone will ever help him out, ever. If he once thinks there's an easy way out, he's wrecked.

43. So he believed. Believed, but 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 [him] listen more carefully to what people meant, instead of what they said. It made him wise.

79. You silent boy, you have found such eloquence now that you can't be a mere boy anymore

93. He is innocent of wrong-doing, and so am I. We shall forgive each other and go on. It was a good decision, and [she] was proud of it. The trouble was, she couldn't carry it out

107. Your dream is a good one. It's the dream of every living creature. The desire that is the very root of life itself: to grow until all the space you can see is part of you, under your control. It's the desire for greatness. There are two ways, though, to fulfill is. One way is to kill anything that is not yourself, to swallow it up or destroy it, until nothing is left to oppose you. But that way is evil. You say to all the universe, only I will be great, and to make room for me the rest of you must give up even what you already have, and become nothing

135. How suddenly we find the flesh of god within us after all, when we thought we were only made of dust

144. Why did I come? I didn't come. I went. I wasn't coming here, to meet these people. I was leaving there. Getting away. Only I tricked myself.

209. How I wish you could have kept on living a life of joy. But no one can. Language comes to us, and with it lies and threats, cruelty and disappointment. You walk, and those steps lead you outside the shelter of your home. To keep the joy of childhood you would have to die as a child, or live as one, never becoming a man, never growing. So I can grieve for the lost child, and yet not regret the good man braced with pain and riven with guilt, who yet was kind to me and many others, and whom I loved, and whom I also almost knew. Almost, almost knew

273. All those months when bean refused to see Ender, hid from him, it was because he couldn't bear to face the fact that Ender was what bean only wished to be - the kind of person on whom you could put all your hopes, who could carry all your fears, and he would not let you down, would not betray you. I want to be the kind of boy you are, thought bean. But I don't want to go through what you've been through to get there

279. You ready to command a fleet? I don't know. It depends on whether they want to win. Here's the thing, Bean. Soldiers don't like to lose And that is why losing is a much more powerful teacher than winning.

329. If I had taken away the desire for violence then humanity would not have been humanity. Not that human beings need to be violent in order to be human, but if you ever lose the will to control, the will to destroy, then it must be because you choose to lose it. My role was not to force you to be gentle and kind; it was to keep you alive while you decided for yourselves what kind of people you wanted to be.

330. He saw them with such better understanding that they took on power and meaning beyond anything in his experience before.

333. You think my apology means I'm weak. But it doesn't. It means I am trying to learn how to be strong.

336. I was forgetting how it really was, I was remembering it through common, ordinary eyes, I was remembering it as the boy I was before, but now I remember that it wasn't me being weak or me being naked, or anything else that I should be ashamed of.

352. [He] was young, too young to see the consequences of his actions, too young to contain his feelings.

359. She never finished the sentence, because at that moment [he] began to learn how to kiss a woman, and she, though she had never kissed a man before, became his tutor.

377. Show him who I am, so he will pity me instead of fearing me. And then we can turn pity into compassion, and compassion into understanding, and understanding into affection, and affection into love, and love into life, the life of our children, the life of the new self we will become together

387. Maybe he's growing up Or maybe he just needed the right circumstances to discover the best in himself.

390. She began to understand things she had never understood before. The world was not as clear and simple a place as she had thought till now.

397. The barrier was only in my mind - which is true of this barrier as well. The more firmly I try to cross the barrier, the more firmly I'm rejected. Well, maybe it's the intention to cross the boundary that pushes me away

404. You're still young so you still think the whole universe revolves around you. But the fact is that it doesn't

426. He simply learned how to be patient. How to bide his time.

431. In another time, he would have flown into a rage at those words, would have blustered and threatened, or lashed out in fury. But he was a different man now, a tempered man, a man of discipline and quiet, ruthless wisdom.

442. Today, I saw a spark of decency. Lets blow on that spark and give it fuel

479. I want you to discover the truth for yourself. I don't ram it down your throats like some do

484. That's one of those questions, whether human beings are really capable of change, or if all seeming changes are really a matter of framing the existing character in a different moral situation...you know

488. It occurred to me that if my friends were loathsome, perhaps I needed to learn from my enemies

496. Just because you know I had no other choice doesn't make the anger go away. I understand that. But you're a man now. You can put away these childish things

516. We've seen the worst that men can do, pa, and been the worst that men can be. But that don't mean that someday we wont see the best, too. And if we can never be perfect after this, well, we can still be pretty good, can't we?

523. No one is the same person today that he was yesterday. No one had a body as young as it was, or a heart so naive, or a head so ignorant as it was

593. Children are resilient. No matter how they are battered, they have a way of thriving

601. If only we could stand outside our lives and look at what we do, we might repair so many injuries before they're done.

602. Some people are so right they never learn a thing.

631. Damn her for forcing him to discover things like this about himself

707. What I am seeing right now is a man who is so dominated by his mother that he is willing to throw away his marriage in order to protect her from the trauma of growing up and acting like an adult. So please do keep on shielding her from any chance of ever becoming a mature, productive, empathic human being... I knew that was a facet of your life when I married you. But don't you dare to accuse me of being envious of the sickness that you call motherlove.

712. I want the truth, no matter how hard it is to hear it.

757. I realized that to [him], at least, cowardice was not something to be loathed, it was something to be cast out, to be exorcised, to be killed

818. He is so young He was never young

823. He was growing up. Soon he would be a man. He wondered what that would mean. Surely he could not have more required of him as an adult that had been required of him as a child. There could not be more

858. Self-knowledge can be painful, but not half so damaging as self-ignorance

924. All children are manipulators

950. Young love is so hard

963. Why give you answers you wont believe? Well, answers I don't believe would be a step forward

1011. To be without Doon, that was what frightened Jason the most. Doon was the foundation for his life, for good or ill; ever since Doon had found him, Jason had known nothing could go wrong in his life - Doon was watching. Now when he stumbled, who would lift him up? This was freedom after all, Jason realized, because from now on no one would save him from the consequences of his own acts. It wasn't freedom that I yearned for, was it? It was childhood that I wanted, and Doon is barring me from my refuge; he has been my father all these years, and now he's thrusting me away. 'Ill never forgive you for this'

1021. He saw that he was young, but he did not hold it against himself. He also saw that he was happy, but he did not wish that he still felt that way. He remembered too well the pain of discovering how foolish he had been. He saw himself more as father had seen him, as a boy on a path of years, echoing childhood with every move, promising manhood also.

1030. Did you ever think that however much they railed against the universe or fate or god or whatever else, that they might not thank you for stealing from them all that makes them human?

1097. 'The wise are not wise because they make no mistakes. They are wise because they correct their mistakes as soon as they recognize them. -Xenocide

1100. 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.