Orson Scott Card Quotes

In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.

I bet the worst part about dying is the part where your whole life passes before you.

There's a point when your tape of life runs off the reel and there's this stillness of your own - I got to know myself.

Regardless of whether one is a writer or a reader, one's task consists first of all in mastering a life that is one's own, not imposed or prescribed from without, no matter how noble its appearance may be. For each of us is issued but one life, and we know full well how it all ends.

I don't believe in luck. I don't believe in destiny. Instead, I believe that our lives are powered by countless microdecisions.

If people knew the story of their lives, how many would then elect to live them?

And after your death, when most of you for the first time realize what life here is all about, you will begin to see that your life here is almost nothing but the sum total of every choice you have made during every moment of your life. Your thoughts, which you are responsible for, are as real as your deeds. You will begin to realize that every word and every deed affects your life and has also touched thousands of lives.

A man can spend his whole existence never learning the simple lesson that he has only one life and that if he fails to do what he wants with it, nobody else really cares.

I've always been somebody who's acutely aware of my mortality.

My life has been such a blur since I was 18, 19 years old. I haven't even had time to contemplate my own life. By forcing yourself to write your life story you learn a great deal about yourself.

What is a fear of living? It's being preeminently afraid of dying. It is not doing what you came here to do, out of timidity and spinelessness. The antidote is to take full responsibility for yourself - for the time you take up and the space you occupy. If you don't know what you're here to do, then just do some good.

A man sooner or later discovers that he is the master-gardener of his soul, the director of his life.

My grand uncle was a traditional priest, and he would always say to me as a kid, 'We stand in our own light,' which essentially for him meant we were entirely responsible for a lot of what happens to us and for the ways in which our lives play out.

I act as if my life depends on each decision. Because it does.

When we are honest with ourselves we must admit that our lives are all that really belong to us. So it is how we use our lives that determines what kind of men we are.

We have to choose every day to be active participants. To wake up in the morning and choose this life and make something of it is an incredible thing. Not many living creatures have that option. We have so many opportunities and options - it's a huge burden, but it's also the most freeing part of our lives.

You get to a point in your life where you go, 'I don't remember what I did.'

The idea behind 'Defending Your Life': Imagine if you had to sit in a courtroom and watch your life. I don't care who you are - if you committed a crime and you had to have all of your emails searched and made public, who on this planet could survive that? Nobody.

Our life is our life. If we waste it, we're fools.

When I turned 30, I had this epiphany that my life is my own and my choices are my own.

You never want to look back on life and say, 'I did nothing.' Because then you'll live the rest of your life upset at yourself and at everyone else around you.

Every man writes his manner. I just made poor decisions.

We have a choice every day to do whatever we do, and that choice is quite scary because it could absolutely change everything about our lives. It's important to keep reminding myself that I have a choice.

You need to weigh things up properly in life and ask yourself if it is your call to make, or one to satisfy others.

We don't know what kind of people we truly are until the moment before our deaths. As death comes to embrace you, you will realize what you are. That's what death is, don't you think?