34 Orson Scott Card Quotes on Self

Orson Scott Card quotes on self

30. I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it.

118. In all [my] life, you are the first person [I've] known that wasn't [myself]. [I] never had to be understanding because [I] always understood.

216. You don't believe that for a second. But I believe that I believe it. And for me that's pretty good. Please don't disillusion me. I haven't had breakfast yet.

218. I know something of how he feels. I know something of having to submerge your will in someone else's. To live for them, as if they were the star of the story of your life, and you merely a supporting player. I have been a slave. But at least in all that time I knew my own heart. I knew what I truly thought even as I did what they wanted, whatever it took to get what I wanted from them.

219. What does it matter, to tell yourself that the thing controlling you comes from outside, if in fact you only experience it inside your own heart? Where can you run from it? How can you hide?

250. I once heard a tale of a man who split himself in two. The one part never changed at all; the other grew and grew. The changeless part was always true, the growing part was always new, and I wondered, when the tale was through, which part was me, and which was you.

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.

320. In the end...oneself is the only person anyone can convince.

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.

449. Humans feel compassion primarily for those they conceive of as being part of themselves

455. Maybe if I could bear my life as it is for one day, for one hour, for one minute, I could forget my wish to be something else

489. I want to change me heart and I don't know how

492. What you call intellectual honesty I call self-deception

499. I know what you do... I know why you do it. I can name you more truly than you can name yourself

522. Was it worth it? To lose part of who he had been in order to live free? Perhaps this new self was better than the old

534. Perhaps I'm hiding from myself. Perhaps I don't want to be what I'm supposed to be. Or perhaps I don't want to keep living the life I already started to live

552. You know nothing at all about men like me

580. Am I a liar, or is he mistaken? I am the only fit judge of what is in my heart, I think

630. Solitary isn't necessarily lonely

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

698. There are depths to me that no one has glimpsed, not even me

725. A way to make it respond to who a person really is. Cut through all the: Yes? Just wondering Cut through all the ? Stories we tell ourselves. All the lies that we believe about ourselves. About who we really are

770. What I hypocrite I am. To pretend that my motives are pure

774. He shuddered at his own fragility. He had thought he was a stronger man than that

822. Why are you at war with yourself? I want things that I do not want to want. Please leave me But why shouldn't you have what you want?

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

864. I was the last to know what was happening to me. Or at least I was the last to know that I knew

869. I'm also vain. But I believe that true humility consists of recognizing the truth about yourself

881. You are not what you seem So many people have said that that I'm beginning to think that's precisely how I do seem. What is it I seem to be that you have now discovered that I'm not?

910. You have so little love for your own life?' You don't know, you've never been alone like I have, but in my solitude I've discovered something. That I'm passing through the world invisibly. Even when people see or speak to me it's as if I didn't exist, as if I had no right to exist. I tread across their lands and they don't see me. I act and act and act and nothing makes any difference in the world. But they touch me.

1005. Who are you? A question I've been trying to answer since adolescence. I finally decided that I was neither god nor Satan. I was so disappointed that I didn't try to narrow it down any further

1020. This time he saw himself more clearly than before. He no longer believed the happiness, of course, but neither did he believe the scorn. He saw himself as if from a distance of years.

1060. Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be. -Ender's Game

1070. I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it. -Ender's Game