Orson Scott Card

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

Physically plain people are perfectly able to see physical beauty in others, while people who are morally maimed are blind to goodness and decency. They honestly think it doesn't exist.

Oh, they know it exists all right. They just never know which people have it.

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.

Here's my throat. I carry no weapon. You could have killed me at any time, even when I knew you were my enemy. Why did you need to deceive me into trusting you first? Were you afraid that death wouldn't bother me enough, unless I felt betrayed?

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.

You always back off at the exact moment when you're about to tell the other person exactly what she needs to hear.

How does he do it? How does he master people without bluster or bullying? How does he make people fear him or love him, not in spite of his ruthlessness but because of it?

We are all fools when one wise man appears.

Keep me alive. Keep me alive long enough for me to conquer the animal within myself. Long enough for me to learn to partner myself with a woman who is better and stronger than me. Long enough for me to reconcile myself with my brothers. Long enough to be as good a man as my father, and as good as my mother, too.

How could you disguise your own thoughts so even you didn't know what you were thinking?

I interpreted all you did as weakness — but I should have known that it was wisdom and strength, freely shared with all of us, even the ones who don't deserve it.

To say what's in their hearts, regardless of shame. It doesn't change what they feel, what they want. It just helps... loosen them up.