22 Orson Scott Card Quotes on Meaning

Orson Scott Card quotes on meaning

225. There's no meaning of life if I've lost you.

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

339. ...'The story the oversoul tells me fit's all the facts that I see. Your story, in which I'm endlessly deceived, can also explain all those facts. I have no way of knowing that your story is not true-but you have no way of knowing that my story isn't true. So I will choose the one that I love. I will close the one that, if it's true, makes this reality one worth living in. I'll act as if the life I hope for is real life, and the life that disgusts me-your life, your view of life-is the lie.'

410. That's what survival means, for me. I thought it was a matter of staying alive, but it isn't. Nobody lives forever anyway. It's how you're remembered. It's what your children thought of you, what they think of you after you're dead. That's survival. And if there's one thing that can truly be said about me, it's this: I survive.

428. Why has my life turned out to be so worthless?

465. You always do that. Make all the questions harder I make them truer

498. Someone has to be an audience for the play you people are always improvising. All of you trying for the center stage. All of you trying to get the audience to notice you, to declare you the star, so that when you die, the curtain will come down and the show will end. But it never does. No one was the star after all That's the difference between life and art, of course. Life has no frames, no curtains, no beginnings and no endings Which should imply that it has no meaning I mean my own life. I mean what I do

584. Like running 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

620. Take upon themselves the burden of the world. Have to save everybody, help everybody, provide for everybody. And when they can't do it, they can't think of any other reason to live. Was that [him]? Probably. A man who had forgotten, not how to live, but why.

652. So I believed all that stuff about pleasing myself. Can't be done. You can't please yourself by doing what you want. Because it doesn't mean anything if it's just you. There has to be somebody it matters to. I think... I think that in my heart I needed that to be [her]. I needed her to care about what I did

702. They gave me powers of thought and memory far beyond anything natural evolution would have given me, but that doesn't give them the right to decide the meaning of my life as if I were some dream. I decide the meaning. If my life is a dream then it's my dream, I'm the dreamer.

721. What bothered him was that he didn't exactly care. He didn't not care either. He was just going through the motions as he had a thousand times before, and this time, suddenly, it all seemed so silly

746. What do you mean, 'ah'? Just 'ah.' does every 'ah' have to mean something?

807. What games was god playing with her life?

870. I want to see the king Wonderful. I'm glad for you. Why are you so glad? Because it's good for every human being to have an unfulfilled wish. It makes all of life so poignant

878. What are you laughing at? Life. And you' : 'It has no meaning for me. But it means something to you. We say that we are happy because we have hope, but it's a lie. We have no hope. You're the only person I've known in my life who had hope, lake-drinker. So leave here. This is a cemetery, leave here and you can save the world. You can, you know. Or if you can't, no one can

897. You looked so intense. Whatever you were saying, you seemed to mean it, and it wasn't amusing at all. Started quite a fashion. People keep looking for purpose now. Complicates everything

922. Then he thought, is my life so empty that this is the best thing I can think of to think about?

980. Death's alright. But not worth going through any extra trouble to get here. You miss everything when you're here... Even the pain. Even the despair.

990. Do you realize what you're saying? You're saying, please take me out of heaven, god, and send me to hell

1022. And that combination of foolish happiness, shame, and love - meant something. Until then, the memories had meant nothing. But these visions of today had taken on a powerful resonance; his whole life trembled with it

1071. Her action ... meant one thing to him and something quite different to her; it was so different that it was not even the same event.