Orson Scott Card on Justice

"Just because you live every waking moment with dreams of controlling other people doesn't mean the rest of us do."

"As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys."

"Maybe she just wanted to be the one to decide when things happened between them. Then again, what women didn't want to decide that?"

"Even the devil gives some justice to his victims, when they're beyond all help."

"You aren't the kind of guy who takes the law into his own hands. You left the law in other hands and it screwed you over pretty badly."

"“I don’t hold with prophets,” said Alvin. “Near as I can tell, they end up just as dead as the next man."

"Your father cares as little as we do. It's just that he tends to despair, while we are full of hope."

"Justice could be cruel, and crueler yet necessity, but mercy was the cruelest thing of all."

"You just refuse to leave them alone until they change their minds. Of their own free will."

"Last night Alvin just got mad, which she said would only guarantee that he’d stay stupid."

"Stop threatening me... I've lived in terror and I've come out of it. Kill me or not, torture me or not, it doesn't matter to me. Just decide what to do."

"A duel is just two murderers who agree to take turns trying to kill each other."

"When you have enough money the law is a reed that will always bend your way."

"It just gripes me hollow, the way God always sneaks in to take the credit."

"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."

"Law can change how people behave when others are watching — that's all."

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

"If he was a good man, how could he leave me? So he must not be a good man. But if he isn't good, then why does it hurt so much to lose him? Is it just my pride that's wounded?"

"Just because you believe it doesn’t make it so."

"I believed all that stuff about pleasing myself. Can't be done. You can't please yourself by doing what you want. Because it doesn't mean anything if it's just you. There has to be somebody it matters to."

"“A liar sees lies,” said Taleswapper. “Even when they aren’t there. Just as a hypocrite sees hypocrites whenever he runs across good people. Can’t stand to think that anyone might really be what you only pretend to be."

"If something just plain didn’t make sense to Alvin, he didn’t believe it, and no amount of quoting from the Bible would convince him. Now Taleswapper was telling him that he was right to refuse to believe things that made no sense."

"Whenever the law gets its hands on you, those who use the law to their own advantage will also turn it against you. Don’t put your trust in the laws of men, Alvin. They were designed by strong men to improve their power over weaker ones."

"She knew that her feelings toward Bean were completely different. No such dreams and fantasies. Just a sense of complete acceptance. She belonged with Bean, not the way that a wife belonged with a husband or, God forbid, a girlfriend with a boyfriend, but rather way the left hand belonged to the right. They simply fit. Nothing exciting about it, nothing to write home about. But it could be counted on."