109 Orson Scott Card Quotes on Relationships

Orson Scott Card quotes on relationships

7. Isn't it possible, he wondered, for one person to love another without trying to own each other? Or is that buried so deep in our genes that we can never get it out? Territoriality. My wife. My friend. My lover. My outrageous and annoying computer personality who's about to be shut off at the behest of a half- crazy girl with OCD on a planet that I never heard of and how will I live without [her] when she's gone?

71. Do you like her? I think that I understood that she didn't want to be liked. As if she were a visitor who expected to go back home any day.

78. It frightened him to have this girl need something from him so desperately

82. [This] isn't my home [she] felt his words like an accusation: you rooted yourself here without thought of whether I could live in this soil. But it's not my fault, she wanted to answer - you're the one who's leaving, not me.

98. My, but I miss the days when we never talked to each other for weeks at a time

126. I think you can't possibly know the truth about somebody unless you love them.

140. The strangest thing about humans is the way they pair up, males and females. Constantly at war with each other, never content to leave each other alone. They never seem to grasp the idea that males and females are separate species with completely different needs and desires, forced to come together only to reproduce.

145. She had passed his test. She had listened to him the way no one else did - without impatience, without finishing his sentences, without letting her gaze waver from his face. He had spoken to her, not with careful precision, but with great emotion... He could talk to this woman as naturally as he had ever talked to anyone before... Yes, she was opinionated, headstrong, bossy, and quick to reach conclusions. But she could also listen to an opposing view, change her mind when she needed to. She could listen, and so he could speak. Perhaps with her he could still be [himself].

156. Maybe they didn't have to discuss things like this. Maybe they had spent so many years together that they knew how to cooperate so smooth things for other people without even thinking about it. Like actors who have performed the same roles together so often that they can improvise without the slightest confusion.

157. I just don't what to face her again. Because I love her and I fear her. Because I'm not sure whether I should help her or try to destroy her.

202. It's the worst thing you'll ever do in your life, helping the people you love to something that in your heart you know is deeply wrong.

205. Changing the world is good for those who want their names in books. But being happy, that is for those who write their names in the lives of others, and hold the hearts of others as the treasure most dear.

211. 'This emotion I'm feeling now, this is love, right?' 'I don't know. Is it a longing? Is it a giddy stupid happiness just because you're with me?' 'Yes,' she said. 'That's influenza,' said Miro. 'Watch for nausea or diarrhea within a few hours.'

215. Doesn't it make you wonder about your own sexual identity, not to mention your sanity, that the two women you love are, respectively, a virtual woman existing only in the transient ansible connections between computers and a woman whose soul is in fact that of a man who is the husband of your mother?

222. You'd think she'd learn something from that. But she still does the same thing. Making decisions that deform other people's lives, without consulting them, without ever conceiving that perhaps they don't want her to save them from whatever supposed misery she's saving them from.

223. But he did love her, with all his heart he loved her. All his heart? All of it he knew about.

224. You aren't very good at determining what other people want and need from you... No one is. We're all as likely to hurt as help.

238. I left because I couldn't....... Because you couldn't bear to let him leave you. You felt it, didn't you? You felt him fading even then. You knew that he needed to go away, to end this life, and you couldn't bear to let another man leave you so you left him first.

252. Would I tame this great being and make her so much my slave that every moment of her time belongs to me? Would I focus her eyes so they can see nothing but my face? I should rejoice that I am part of her, instead of resenting I'm not more of her.

275. There were times for absolute honesty between friends, but this wasn't one of them.

280. Please stop reassuring me of how respectful you are whenever you're about to tell me that I'm an idiot.

284. It was as if Graff had read his heart and found the lie that would penetrate most deeply into his soul and told it to him.

311. I've always loved you. But no woman in her right mind would ever marry you and have your babies because NOBODY COULD STAND TO RAISE THEM. You will have the most hellish children. So have them in a colony where there'll be somplace for them to go when they run away from home about fifteen times before they're ten.

325. There's nothing between them anymore. I could see it fall, the last tie of love or even of concern. If he died tonight, she would be content. to Luet this seemed the most terrible of tragedies. Once these two had been joined together in love, or something like love... And yet the last tie between them was broken now. All lost, all gone. Nothing lasted, nothing.

326. Permanence was always an illusion, and love was just the disguise that lovers wore to hide the death of their union from each other for a while.

331. It all spoke of the willingness of people to hurt each other, the burning passion to control what other people thought and did. So many people, in secret, subtle ways, acted to destroy people - and not just their enemies, either, but also their friends. Destroying them for the pleasure of knowing that they had the power to cause pain. And so few who devoted their lived to building other peoples strength and confidence. So few who were true teachers, genuine mates.

335. [He] didn't know what to say. He didn't even know the name for what he was feeling. 'I think that I don't know you.' she looked at him, a little perplexed. 'No that's wrong. I think that I didn't know you before, even though I thought I knew you, and know that I finally know you, I don't really know you at all.'

356. Will I be coming to you as husband or a child? A partner or a student?

358. That was all she needed - was for him to tell her he didn't expect her to be the waterseer all the time, that he was marrying the fragile, imperfect human being, and not the overpowering image she inadvertently put on.

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.

364. I hate it when you back away from a quarrel like that. I don't like conflict. But you always back off at the exact moment when you're about to tell the other person exactly what she needs to hear.

365. If there's one thing our group is too small to endure, it's sexual tension

371. She understands my heart better than you do, and I can speak her thoughts almost before she speaks them

372. Does [he] imagine that I could desire a mere woman, when [she] is my wife?

373. Love and respect have nothing to do with controlling what other people do

392. Individual people have always been more important to her than to me. It's my weakness, that I don't have her awareness of other people's feelings

396. She of all people should have known that it was his desire to be a hero that impelled him now, it was his passion to find out what would happen next, to make the next thing happen. She, if she loved him, should have understood

402. Don't lie to me! Don't seem so normal when I know you have cut yourself off from me in your heart! If you can put on our affectionate closeness like a mask, then I'll never be able to take joy in it again.

403. I knew you'd say that, that's why I hate you

408. People can be happy together

413. Those bonds aren't bondage at all... They're freedom

419. Maybe I took the first step toward healing him

421. What cannot be healed has been healed. What was lost forever has been found. Therefore let that which cannot be forgiven be forgiven.

430. I don't think what they made between them was what you or I would understand as friendship

462. If you don't want to control what I think, why did you raise your voice? Why did you argue with me at all?

471. There are many things that men and women do not say, because to say them would only bring unhappiness

481. Don't you hate it when somebody knows you better than you know yourself?

487. Why don't you say what you're thinking? What makes you think you want to hear it? Because the way you looked at me... I knew what you were thinking was, I love her, I want her beside me forever, I want her to be my wife, and ... I tell you honestly, I'm sick and tired of waiting for you to say it outloud What! Why should I tell you what you already know? Because I need to hear it

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

539. 'Always take me with you, damnit!'

544. You're not losing me, mother. I'm in love. I never had you, not since you escaped from the womb

546. Women always said things like that, and it made him crazy. It's as if every conversation with a woman was a test, and men always failed it, because they always lacked the key to the code and so they never quite understood what the conversation was really about. If, just once, the man could understand, really comprehend the whole of the conversation, then the perfect union between male and female would be possible. But instead men and women continued to cohabit, even to love each other, without ever quite crossing over the chasm of misunderstanding between them

553. Living with a god is not what it's cracked up to be. They think their women should be grateful just to have them around

555. Numb - that's just the feeling you hope for on your wedding night

557. Don't hurt each other any more, children How could I hurt her? She'd have to love me before I could do that

562. But charm, intelligence, and good looks, did they add up to love?

575. In the absence of understanding, that was a good a reason as any for living together and making babies and raising them up and throwing them out of the house and then going through the long slow decline together until one of them died and left the other alone again, understanding as little as ever about what their spouses really wanted, who they really were. Was that tragedy? Or was that comedy? Was there really any difference?

598. Do you begrudge her this: that once in her life she had a man who loved her with his whole heart, if only for that moment?

599. Is that why you hate him so...? Because he knows the woman as she might have been?

604. Asking a man if he could be trusted was like asking an unwed girl if she was a virgin. The question mattered, but the asking of it was a gross insult

606. And if it tortures you to know that another man was with her in her life, console yourself with this: he only knew her but the once

613. This is the way the paths of our lives entwine and cross and go apart: if she sent for him the day before, even then he might have loved her. But she did not send for him until she was afraid; she was not afraid until he undid her work; he did not undo her work until he was past loving her. If only we could stand outside our lives and look at what we do, we might repair so many injuries before they're done

625. That was the most terrible thing that a woman could to a decent man: look vulnerable and ask him for mercy. If he refused her he'd be denying all his instincts as a provider and protector

626. He'd suppose she was looking at him with hurt and longing, that sort of dreamy-eyed look that he remembered very well from high school, the look that girls eventually realized they probably shouldn't use with guys unless they really meant something it, because it had the power to make them hover but then they were pretty hard to get rid of

627. Maybe she just wanted to be the one to decide when things happened between them. Then again, what women didn't want to decide that?

628. She knew exactly what she had done to him. And yet she couldn't quite believe that she was jerking him around

633. The kind of man that's the one kind worth loving, when I tell him that story, he'll never be able to love me

634. There's a lot of guys around who are better for you than I am

640. Why do you bother asking, when you know the answer and you also know that you don't intend to believe it?

645. We're not a family. We're the opposite of a family. We're people so lonely that when we're together we make a black hole of loneliness and everything else gets sucked down into it and is never seen again

647. There would be no compromise, no sweet-talking, no tears that could soften the hardest heart. It's not my heart that's hard, anyway. It's hers. Having no concern for what she's doing to me, the risks she's making me take against my will. My whole future down the toilet

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

655. I'm nobody's child You're mine now. Not my child, but mine, to miss you when you go, to look out for you, to hope you'll be careful

658. You may think you ashamed, but you not. Deep down in your heart. You know you done it all You don't know what I feel

659. I found her and then I lost her

675. We're both damaged property, I guess Plenty of time for renovation

677. She watched him go into the building. He as striding boldly, almost jauntily. She liked the look of him, always had. He exuded confidence without ever looking as is he wanted to make sure everyone else knew how confident he was

689. I didn't wish [her] dead, actually. I just wished her gone.

706. You took sides!' So did you. The difference is that I sided with a man who was asking nothing more than to live with dignity... And you were siding with a woman who was using her connection with me as a way of raising herself above other people, which is foolish and self-destructive and I kept waiting for you to say something, for you to do anything to get [her] under control and you never did, not even when [he] was walking out on her because he couldn't take her psychotic hunger for control any longer

733. Her soul belong as much to [them] as to him. By dividing her loyalties, she fragmented them; none were strong enough to sway her deepest desires. Thus he discovered what he supposed all faithful men eventually discover - that no human relationship is ever anything but tentative. There is no such thing as an unbreakable bond between people.

735. I don't ever want to see you again. You've made me regret the one unregretable decision of my life - [her]. You've made me wish, somewhere in my heart, that id never married her. Which is like making me wish id never been born

739. You have just described the relationship between males and females. Two completely different species, completely unintelligible to each other, living side by side and thinking they're really the same. The fascinating thing is that the two species persist in marrying each other and having babies, sometimes of one species, sometimes of other, and the whole time they can't understand why they can't understand each other.

773. She will look at you as women look at men, and she will judge you as women judge men - not on the strength of their arguments, and not on their cleverness or prowess in battle, but rather on the force of their character, the intensity of their passion, the strength of their soul, their compassion, and - ah, this above all - their conversation

797. Damn this girl for her silence, for her seeing eyes

798. Matthew did not measure her bosom or her buttocks with his gaze. Rather he worshiped. But adoration - that laid upon her an obligation she did not know how to pay. At least, not in any coin she was willing to offer him

801. I was prepared for him to have human failings, but I did not know he would own me with his eyes as if he had a right

802. Afraid because his eyes still looked at her and said, mine, and because somewhere in her was something that answered, impossibly, yours

804. There are 2 kinds of women a man can marry. The kind that's stronger than he is, and the kind that's weaker. I've lived with both, Charlie. It's hard to live with a strong woman, because she can make you afraid sometimes, and sometimes you feel like you aren't in control of your life. But let me tell you, boy, it's a damn sight better than living with a weak woman, because many a man isn't as good as his woman, but I never knew a husband who was better than his wife

838. No man can bear to live with a woman who speaks nothing but the truth to him. My mistress has often told me that no man could endure me for more than an hour

846. Each incapable of knowing the others virtue, because like all children they only wanted to be known, and cared little about giving that gift to others

865. She never touched me, at least not as she had before, not with the promise of decades of passion in out future. She knew, but I did not yet know

877. I'm losing Savanna That's good. No one should own someone else

918. Only maybe he did get it. The joke wasn't men, the joke was people who didn't know what they wanted to give or get and so kept disappointing and being disappointed.

927. Grownup men don't share their lives with their sisters, they share them with their wives

931. Did any of these lines actually work? And even if they did, what came of it? One-night stands? Quick torrid affairs? Did any of these deliberate encounters lead to something that cured loneliness instead of simply easing the symptoms for an hour or two? [he] wasn't interested in meeting the kind of women who would come to one of those places looking for the kind of man who hoped to meet a woman there

946. It's cold You should have put your jammies back on last night After you went to all the trouble of pulling them off with your teeth? In your dreams You mean I was dreaming?

947. Husbands are usually so overrated

950. Young love is so hard

961. The ways of love are strange and hard: the love you want is always barred; the love you have you want to change. The ways of love are hard and strange

975. A man who has loved the perfect lover isn't likely to find a substitute very soon

985. I wasn't crazy to love her was I? ...we're all crazy to love anybody. But it drives us even crazier if we don't

1012. I'm so much like you that to love me is purest narcissism

1015. My strongest memories are yours

1037. Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to be controlled by good people, by people who love you. (Ender's Game) Valentine to Ender

1053. When you really know somebody, you can't hate them...or maybe it's just that you can't really know them until you stop hating them.

1056. When you decide to hide something from me, will you at least tell me that aren't going to tell me?

1066. ... if he was a good man, how could he leave me? So he must not be a good man. But if he isn't good, then why does it hurt so much to lose him? -Enchantment

1090. I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. '(Ender's Game) Spoken by Ender

1098. 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.