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"There's always moral instruction whether the writer inserts it deliberately or not. The least effective moral instruction in fiction is that which is consciously inserted. Partly because it won't reflect the storyteller's true beliefs, it will only reflect what he BELIEVES he believes, or what he thinks he should believe or what he's been persuaded of. But when you write without deliberately expressing moral teachings, the morals that show up are the ones you actually live by. The beliefs that you don't even think to question, that you don't even notice-- those will show up. And that tells much more truth about what you believe than your deliberate moral machinations."
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"Musicians do not get on stage without hearing the song singing inside of them. Poets do not write as if they are jotting down a sermon, they see everything in their subconscious before presenting it to the conscious, which they later turn to readable materials. Artist do not draw and paint without painting in dream states, trance, or see an art form that others do not see. Being creative does not calls for being any supernatural entity, but in creating with the entities inside of you."
"I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil.I have also found that what I write is read by an audience which puts little stock either in grace or the devil. You discover your audience at the same time and in the same way that you discover your subject, but it is an added blow."
"Unfortunately, bureaucratic problems at the federal level are causing many other small Washington companies to be denied federal funding that would help transfer their ideas from their laboratories into our homes and hospitals."
"Now is not the time for bigots and racists. No time for sexists and homophobes. Now, more than ever, is the time for ARTISTS. It's time for us to rise above and to create. To show humanity. To spread hope. We must prevent society from destroying itself, from losing its way. Now is the time for love."
"Generally, people who are good at writing letters have no need to write letters. They've got plenty of life to lead inside their own context."
"You know you're writing well when you're throwing good stuff into the wastebasket."
"As I suspect is true of many who write for a living, as I write I think about all sorts of things. I don't necessarily write down what I'm thinking; it's just that as I write I think about things. As I write, I arrange my thoughts. And rewriting and revising takes my thinking down even deeper paths."
"The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say."
"I like music," she said slowly, "because when I hear it, I . . . I lose myself within myself, if that makes any sense. I become empty and full all at once, and I can feel the whole earth roiling around me. When I play. I'm not . . . for once, I'm not destroying, I'm creating."
Explore more quotes by Orson Scott Card
"You were baptized?""My sister told me that yes, Father baptized me shortly after birth. My mother was a Protestant of a faith that deplored infant baptism, so they had a quarrel about it." The Bishop held out his hand to lift the Speaker to his feet. The Speaker chuckled. "Imagine. A closet Catholic and a lapsed Mormon, quarreling over religious procedures that they both claimed not to believe in."
"I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration."
"It's there in your own Bible, Carlotta. Two trees-knowledge and life. You eat of the tree of knowledge, and you will surely die. You eat of the tree of life, and you remain a child in the garden forever, undying."
"It was not about physical strength, Wit reminded himself. It was 90 percent mental, 10 percent physical. That's what the SEAL instructors were looking for: men and women who could disregard the pleadings of the body. Pain was nothing, sleep was nothing. What was chaffed skin, wrecked muscles, bleeding sores? The body chooses to be sore. The body chooses to be exhausted. But the SEAL mind rejects it. The SEAL mind commands the body, not the other way around."
"If you try and lose then it isn't your fault. But if you don't try and we lose, then it's all your fault."
"I cut the wood however I like, but it's the grain that decides the strength and shape of it. You can add and subtract memories from people, but it isn't just your memory that makes you who you are. There's something in the grain of the mind."
"My father always said that government is like watching another man piss in your boot. Someone feels better but it certainly isn't you."
"Personal affection is a luxury you can have only after all your enemies are eliminated. Until then, everyone you love is a hostage, sapping your courage and corrupting your judgment."
"The wise are not wise because they make no mistakes. They are wise because they correct their mistakes as soon as they recognize them."
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