Orson Scott Card Bean Quotes & Sayings

Bean could see the hunger in their eyes. Not the regular hunger, for food, but the real hunger, the deep hunger, for family, for love, for belonging. — Orson Scott Card

You don't have to eat the entire turd to know that it's not a crab cake. — Orson Scott Card

What a laugh, though. To think that one human being could ever really know another. You could get used to each other, get so habituated that you could speak their words right along with them, but you never knew why other people said what they said or did what they did, because they never even knew themselves. Nobody understands anybody.
And yet somehow we live together, mostly in peace, and get things done with a high enough success rate that people keep trying. Human beings get married and a lot of marriages work, and they have children and most of them grow up to be decent people, and they have schools and businesses and factories and farms that have results at some level of acceptability - all without having a clue what's going on inside anybody's head.
Muddling through, that's what human beings do.
that was the part of being human that Bean hated the most. — Orson Scott Card

Here it is, Bean: Those stones in India? Virlomi started it, of course. Got a message from her: >Now you are not in cesspool, can communicate again. Have no email here. Stones are >mine. Back on bridge soon. War in earnest. Post to me only, this site, pickup name >BridgeGirl password not stepstool. At least I think that's what "stones are mine" means. And what does "password not stepstool" mean? That the password is "not stepstool"? Or that the password is not "stepstool," in which case it's probably not "aardvark," either, but how does that help? — Orson Scott Card

And then he thought: Is this how idiots rationalize their stupidity to themselves? — Orson Scott Card

I'm not stupid! In Bean's experience, that was a sentence never uttered except to prove its own inaccuracy. — Orson Scott Card

Aw, Poke, you poor, kind, decent, stupid girl. You saved me and I let you down. — Orson Scott Card

He didn't feel that way about anybody. You just live in the place you're in, you don't worry about where you used to be or where you wish you were, here is where you are and here's where you've got to find a way to survive and lying in bed boo-hooing doesn't help much with that. — Orson Scott Card

Truth did not care much about such credentials. It refused to give up and reveal itself just because it realized you were bound to find it eventually. Bean — Orson Scott Card

Maybe we're assigning Achilles supernatural powers," said Petra. "He isn't a god. Not even a hero. Just a sick kid." "No," said Bean. "I'm a sick kid. He's the devil." "Well, so," said Petra, "maybe the devil's a sick kid. — Orson Scott Card

One mind can think only of its own questions; it rarely surprises itself. — Orson Scott Card

He would always speak the language of the heart with an awkward foreign accent. — Orson Scott Card

He walked down the corridor, lined with his soldiers, who looked at him with love, with awe, with trust. Except Bean, who looked at him with anguish. Ender Wiggin was not larger than life, Bean knew. He was exactly life-sized, and so his larger-than-life burden was too much for him. And yet he was bearing it. So far. — Orson Scott Card

In the end it was only Peter who had something he could say from the heart.
"Am I the only one here who sees something of himself in the man who's lying inside this box?"
No one had an answer for him, either yes or no. — Orson Scott Card

But what kind of race is it, when the racers never let go of each other's hands, and the winner pulls the loser laughing over the finish line? — Orson Scott Card

Achilles might be a good papa to the family, but he was also a killer, and he never forgives.
Poke knew that, though. Bean warned her, and she knew it, but she chose Achilles for their papa anyway. Chose him and then died for it. She was like that Jesus that Helga preached about in her kitchen while they ate. She died for her people. And Achilles, he was like God. He made people pay for their sins no matter what they did.
The important thing is, stay on the good side of God. That's what Helga teaches, isn't it? Stay right with God.
I'll stay right with Achilles. I'll honor my papa, that's for sure, so I can stay alive until I'm old enough to go out on my own. — Orson Scott Card

First thing we need to do," said Bean, "is split up." "No," said Petra. "I've done this before, Petra. Going into hiding. Keeping from getting caught." "And if we're together we're too identifiable, la la la," she said. "Saying 'la la la' doesn't mean it isn't true. — Orson Scott Card

I want to be the kind of boy you are, thought Bean. But I don't want to go through what you've been through to get there. — Orson Scott Card

He dreamed, as human beings always dream - random firings of memory and imagination that the unconscious mind tries to put together into coherent stories. Bean rarely paid attention to his own dreams, rarely even remembered that he dreamed at all. But — Orson Scott Card

So it's Mr. Wiggin and Who The Hell Are You.'
'About right,' Bean replied. — Orson Scott Card

And that," said Bean, "is why losing is a much more powerful teacher than winning. — Orson Scott Card

No point in getting emotional about anything. Being emotional didn't help with survival. What mattered was to learn everything, analyze the situation, choose a course of action, and then move boldly. Know, think, choose, do. There was no place in that list for "feel." Not that Bean didn't have feelings. He simply refused to think about them or dwell on them or let them influence his decisions, when anything important was at stake. — Orson Scott Card

I don't freeze up because it isn't my battle. I'm helping. I'm watching. But I'm free. Because it's Ender's game. — Orson Scott Card

Besides," said Suriyawong. "This was not a rescue operation."
"What was it, target practice? Chinese skeet?"
"An offer of transportation to an invited guest of the Hegemon," said Suriyawong. "And the loan of a knife."
Achilles held up the bloody thing, dangling it from the point. "Yours?" he asked.
"Unless you want to clean it," said Suriyawong.
Achillese handed it to him. Suriyawong took out his cleaning kit and wiped down the blade, then began to polish it.
"You wanted me to die," said Achilles quietly.
"I expected you to solve your own problems," said Suriyawong. — Orson Scott Card

How much time? Not as much as I had yesterday. — Orson Scott Card

You honor our humble abode,' said Bean.
'I do, don't I,' said Peter with a smile. — Orson Scott Card

Once you get a brother, you don't give him up easy. — Orson Scott Card

Bean sighed inwardly. It never failed. Whenever he had any conversation with Ender, it turned into an argument. — Orson Scott Card

Time to repay old humiliations, is that it, Bean? 'Of course,' Ender said contemptuously. 'I'm not as close to the floor as you are. — Orson Scott Card

The thing with brothers is, you're supposed to take turns being the keeper. Sometimes you get to sit down and be the brother who is kept. — Orson Scott Card

Mom," said Peter, "nobody thinks you're a lackwit, if that's what you're worried about."
Lackwit? In what musty drawer of some dead English professor's dust-covered desk did you find that word? I assure you that never in my worst nightmares did I ever suppose that I was a lackwit. — Orson Scott Card

Don't launch it," said Bean into his microphone, head down. "Set it off inside your ship. God be with you. — Orson Scott Card

Death is not a tragedy to the one who dies; to have wasted the life before that death, that is the tragedy. — Orson Scott Card

I need you to be clever, Bean. I need you to think of solutions to problems we haven't seen yet. I want you to try things that no one has ever tried because they're absolutely stupid. — Orson Scott Card

The Buggers have finally, finally learned that we humans value each and every individual human life ... But they've learned this lesson just in time for it to be hopelessly wrong - for we humans do, when the cause is sufficient, spend our own lives. We throw ourselves onto the grenade to save our buddies in the foxhole. We rise out of the trenches and charge the entrenched enemy and die like maggots under a blowtorch. We strap bombs on our bodies and blow ourselves up in the midst of our enemies. We are, when the cause is sufficient, insane. — Orson Scott Card

What I want," he said softly, "is to stand in this meadow and walk in the light of the sun. — Orson Scott Card

Come in, Bean. Come in Julian Delphiki, longed-for child of good and loving parents. Come in, kidnapped child, hostage of fate. Come and talk to the Fates, who are playing such clever little games with your life. — Orson Scott Card

If you think that," said Bean, "you're an idiot." "Actually, I do think that, and I'm not an idiot. — Orson Scott Card

And were you punished? No. Why? Because you were rich."
"Money and talent aren't the same thing."
"That's because you can inherit money that was earned by your ancestors," said Sister Carlotta. "And everybody recognizes the value of money, while only select groups recognize the value of talent. — Orson Scott Card

Poke gave him life. Ender gave it meaning. — Orson Scott Card

What kind of rescue is this, where you toss the prisoner a knife and stand and wait to see what happens? — Orson Scott Card

What if the first homo sapiens had felt that way? We'd all still be neanderthals, and when the Buggers came they would have blasted us all to bits and that would be that." "We didn't evolve from neanderthals," said Bean. "Well, it's a good thing we have that little fact squared away," said Petra. — Orson Scott Card

So you love me," said Petra softly when the kiss ended.
I'm a raging mass of hormones thet I'm too young to understand," said Bean. "You're a female of a closely related species. According to all the best primatologists, I really have no choice."
That's nice," she said ... — Orson Scott Card

It didn't matter he was brilliant and dedicated and good. He was a child. He was young.
No he isn't, thought Ender. Small, yes. Bur Bean has been through a battle with a whole army depending on him and on the soldiers that he led. and he performed splendidly, and the won. There's no youth in that. No childhood. — Orson Scott Card

Thanks from keeping me from being a liar," said Nikolai.
"What?"
"About your having diarrhea."
"For you I'd get dysentery."
"Now that's friendship. — Orson Scott Card

Bean also saw how the man's body moved inside his clothes, with a kind of contained strength that made his clothes seem like Kleenex, he could rip through the fabric just by tugging at it a little, because nothing could hold him in except his own self-control. — Orson Scott Card

O my son Absalom,' Bean said softly, knowing for the first time the kind of anguish that could tear such words from a man's mouth. 'my son, my son Absalom. Would God I could die for thee, O Absalom, my son. My sons! — Orson Scott Card