Orson Scott Card

“We don’t go to Fort Chicago,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “We go to the holy place.”

“A church?” asked Alvin.

Ta-Kumsaw laughed. “You White people, when you make a place holy you build walls so nothing of the land can get in. Your god is nothing and nowhere, so you build a church with nothing alive inside, a church that could be anywhere, it doesn’t matter—nothing and nowhere.”

“Well what does make a place holy?” asked Alvin.

“Because that’s where the Red man talks to the land, and the land answers.”

He didn't know if he had the right or not. Didn't know if he was taking like a Red man, just what the land offered, or stealing like a White man, murdering whatever it pleased him to kill.

Men like Jackson were so upright and honest-seeming, but Hooch knew that there wasn't no such thing as a good man, just a man who wasn't bought yet, or wasn't in deep enough trouble, or didn't have the guts to reach out and take what he wanted. That's all that virtue ever boiled down to, so far as Hooch ever saw in his life.

That's how it goes within a family. You think you know each other so well, and so you don't bother hardly getting to know each other at all.

We don't admit it to ourselves, not until the very moment of death, but in that moment, we see all life before us and we understand how we chose, every day of our lives, the manner of our death.

Peggy chose her words to be true, and therefore beautiful, and therefore good.

The White man never guessed at what the Red man saw and heard and felt. The White man brought death and emptiness to this place. The White man cut down wise old trees with much to tell; young saplings with many lifetimes of life ahead; and the White man never asked, Will you be glad to make a lodgehouse for me and my tribe? Hack and cut and chop and burn, that was the White man's way. Take from the forest, take from the land, take from the river, but put nothing back. The White man killed animals he didn't need, animals that did him no harm; yet if a bear woke hungry in the winter and took so much as a single young pig, the White man hunted him down and killed him in revenge. He never felt the balance of the land at all.

This is what I want to do forever, each one thought. Rise in the morning, come to the mill, and work all day with him beside me. Never mind that the wish was impossible. Never mind that they might never see each other again, once the boy left for his apprenticeship back in the place of his birth. That only added to the sweetness of the moment, which would soon become a memory, would soon become a dream.

When both parties are lying and they both know the other party's lying, it comes powerful close to being the same thing as telling the truth.

Wasn't that their natural right, to know the truth so as to be able to let the truth lead them to do good or evil, as they chose?

“I want to know how many years I got.”

“Many,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “Or few. All that matters is what you do with however many years you have.”

Didn't he know that when you work to destroy, you invite the Destroyer?