Frasi di Orson Scott Card

pagina 8

“Ah, Palicrovol, quando imparerai che la misericordia è buona quanto la persona a cui essa viene fatta? Hai risparmiato Asineth, che avrebbe dovuto morire; ora non risparmierai Orem Fianchi-Magri, chiamato Banningside, il cui buon cuore dovrebbe nascere centomila volte sulla terra. Sei come Asineth? Imparerai tutte le tue lezioni al contrario?”

“Il suo amore per la teatralità lo indusse quasi a rispondere con qualche eroico epigramma; ma aveva appreso fin da giovane che la teatralità non sostituiva una sicura vittoria. Perciò le morse il cuore con i denti della sua mano sinistra, per abbatterla subito con un colpo magico. Anche se avesse resistito, sarebbe stata troppo scossa per combatterlo, dopo.”

“Donnola — disse la Regina Bella — tu sai ora come sono stata servita. Dimmi… è giusta la mia vendetta?
— Ti è stato fatto un torto — disse la Principessa dei Fiori.
— È giusta la mia vendetta?
— Sei giusta a vendicarti.
— Ma la mia vendetta è giusta? — Bella sorrise, come la benedizione di un santo.
— Solo se ti vendichi di coloro che ti hanno fatto del male, e solo se la tua vendetta è uguale al torto subito.
— Suvvia, ho sentito dire che posso contare su Donnola Bocca-di-Verità per sentire il vero. Te lo chiedo per la quarta volta… sono giusta?
— No — disse la Principessa dei Fiori.
— Bene — disse Bella.”

“Allora scappò dal droghiere, stringendo in mano le sue poche monete di rame. Ma paura o non paura, voleva essere sicuro; così si fermò poco lontano, a guardare: e proprio come aveva pensato, Glasin riuscì a far stare tutta la sua mercanzia nel carretto, a parte la roba marcia. E per proteggere del cibo marcio, Orem avrebbe dovuto aspettare tutto il giorno, senza essere pagato. Non c'era onore a Inwit, neanche un briciolo, e questo lo rese più timoroso che mai della punta del pugnale che gli era stata puntata contro la pancia. Un pugnale aveva solo una punta, ma un traditore colpisce da qualsiasi parte, dicevano, e solo adesso Orem capiva quanto fosse vero”

“If a father commands a son to commit a crime so terrible that the son can't do it and live with himself, then is it betrayal for the son to disobey his father?”

“He understood the tone of voice instinctively, as he always had; it was his greatest gift, to know emotions even better than the person feeling them.”

“We are all fools when one wise man appears.”

“The others are even more likely to obey their god.
Which is?
It dangles between their legs.”

“La Tia was fearless, but that could mean either that she had no guile or that she had no conscience.”

“I want to see the king.
Wonderful. I'm glad for you.
Why are you so glad?
Because it's good for every human being to have an unfulfilled wish. It makes all of life so poignant.”

“The ways of love are strange and hard: the love you want is always barred; the love you have you want to change. The ways of love are hard and strange.”

“I'll be dead and you'll think about this day and wonder which of us was more the slave, you or me!”

““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.””

“You are exactly what you seem, and so you always assume that other people are, too.”

“What difference does it make, whether we keep our silence because [they] force us or because we're afraid they might force us?”

“To be cut off from the land of the living, and yet not to be dead. How could I bear that?
That's how most men live, and don't even know it.”

“Do you speak Scorn and Mockery to everyone? Or just to your betters?”

“If there's no place in the universe for a man to resist the thieves of freedom and still be called a good man, then I don't think there is any good or evil in the universe.”

“My religion,” said Ms. Brown, “is to try to falsify all hypotheses.”

“That was the most terrible thing that a woman could to a decent man: look vulnerable and ask him for mercy. If he refused her he'd be denying all his instincts as a provider and protector.”

“Wishful thinking gives false gods to people who hunger for gods, but those who yearn for a world with no gods are no less likely to fall victim to their own wishful thinking.”

“How could I hurt her? She'd have to love me before I could do that.”

“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.”

“I was the last to know what was happening to me. Or at least I was the last to know that I knew.”

““You,” said Purity, “have been long enough out of England to pick up some American brag.”
“But surrounded by Americans as I am,” said Cooper, “my brag is like a farthing in a sack of guineas.””

“The fear of death in the one place was not as strong as another kind of fear, the fear of a world gone crazy, a place where anything could happen, where nothing could be trusted, where nothing was certain. A terrible place.”

“Out of respect for custom he treats me as if all women were equally worthless. He gives custom more respect than he gives me.”

“Folks always seemed to think that as long as they didn’t know about something bad, it wasn’t happening, so whoever told them actually caused it to be true.”

“Some people can't see miracles when they're right in the middle of them.
Better than seeing miracles that don't exist.
You're determined to stand entirely alone, aren't you?
That's where I've always stood.”

“Why did people get so upset when somebody mentioned dying? Did they think that if they didn’t mention it, it would skip a few people and leave them alive forever?”

“We're both damaged property, I guess.
Plenty of time for renovation.”

“We are the actors and the audience as well, all of us. And the critics. We are also the critics.”

“For the first time I understood the haunting beauty of the song. It was the song of a killer who longed to die. It was the song of justice yearned for but not yet done.”