Fiction Quotes by Orson Scott Card

Science fiction is about what could be but isn't; fantasy is about what couldn't be.

— Orson Scott Card

Science Fiction has rivets, fantasy has trees.

— Orson Scott Card

All the stories are fictions. What matters is which fiction you believe.

— Orson Scott Card

There's a reason why every human society has fiction. It teaches us how to be 'good,' to behave in a way that…

— Orson Scott Card

Everything important in sci-fi showed up in the magazines first. It's the proving ground for new writers and new ideas.

— Orson Scott Card

A rustic setting always suggests fantasy; to suggest science fiction, you need sheet metal and plastic. You need rivets.

— Orson Scott Card

My favourite all-time work of fiction: Lord of the Rings. My favourite all-time nonfiction book: Guns, Germs, and Steel. Ask me again…

— Orson Scott Card

Oh no, real life is escape. The great terrors, the horrors--we hope--of your life come from reading fiction.

— Orson Scott Card

When I write fiction, I create characters whose views are not my own, and I allow them to be eloquent in defense…

— Orson Scott Card

It's all just fictions anyway. We do what we do and then we make up reasons for it afterward but they're never…

— Orson Scott Card

I realized that everything important in sci-fi showed up in the magazines first. It's the proving ground for new writers and new…

— Orson Scott Card

“As often I have been a science fiction writer writing science fiction for the community of science fiction readers, I am also,…

— Orson Scott Card

“As a child of privilege, no one is your friend. They will claim to be your friends, they will laugh at your…

— Orson Scott Card

“If you have people do some magic, impossible thing by stroking a talisman or praying to a tree, it's fantasy; if they…

— Orson Scott Card

“Speculative fiction by definition is geared toward an audience that wants strangeness, an audience that wants to spend time in worlds that…

— Orson Scott Card

At some point, every science fiction and fantasy story must challenge the reader's experience and learning. That's much of the reason why…

— Orson Scott Card

“It wouldn't be practical to have sections called "Dog Stories", "Horse Stories", "Mid-life Crisis and Adultery", "Writers and Artists Struggling to Discover…

— Orson Scott Card

We don't read novels to have an experience like life. Heck, we're living lives, complete with all the incompleteness. We turn to…

— Orson Scott Card

“What we've done is make the categories of science fiction and fantasy larger, freer, and more inclusive than any other genre of…

— Orson Scott Card

In a way, being a Mormon prepares you to deal with science fiction, because we live simultaneously in two very different cultures.…

— Orson Scott Card

“There's always moral instruction whether the writer inserts it deliberately or not. The least effective moral instruction in fiction is that which…

— Orson Scott Card

“Rigorous extrapolation, a gosh-wow love of gadgets, and mystical adventures in strange and mysterious places; every major stream in speculative fiction today…

— Orson Scott Card

I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not "true" because we're hungry for another kind…

— Orson Scott Card

“Why else do we read anyway? I think most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not "true" because…

— Orson Scott Card

“Why else do we read fiction, anyway? Not to be impressed by somebody's dazzling language - or at least I hope that's…

— Orson Scott Card

...You believe that the kind of story you want to tell might be best received by the science fiction and fantasy audience.…

— Orson Scott Card

The difference between science fiction and fantasy … is simply this: science fiction has rivets and fantasy has trees.

— Orson Scott Card

Fiction, because it is not about somebody who actually lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself.

— Orson Scott Card

We care about moral issues, nobility, decency, happiness, goodness—the issues that matter in the real world, but which can only be addressed,…

— Orson Scott Card