"Of course, I also hear from critics who detest what I do, and while sometimes I feel rather proud of having made various the loathsome people or groups angry, at other times I wonder why I put up with such grief"
About this Quote
There is a tight little moral trap hidden in Card's candor: the same backlash that bruises you can also flatter you. He admits to a seductively modern reflex - measuring worth by the enemies you make - then immediately punctures it with the exhausted question every public creator eventually faces: is the fight itself becoming the product?
The line "rather proud" does double duty. It signals a writer's appetite for provocation (art that lands should land hard), but it also confesses the dopamine hit of outrage economics: if "loathsome people or groups" are furious, you must be doing something right. That framing is deliberately self-protective. It casts critics not as interlocutors but as evidence, converting dissent into validation. In a polarized culture, that's a powerful insulation tactic: you don't have to answer arguments if you can classify the arguer.
Then comes the wobble: "at other times I wonder why I put up with such grief". The bravado collapses into fatigue, and the quote becomes less a manifesto than a glimpse of the emotional overhead of visibility. Card is writing from the position of a successful genre author who has been intensely debated not just for craft but for beliefs and public statements. The subtext is that controversy isn't abstract; it's inboxes, boycotts, invitations rescinded, fans demanding purity, strangers demanding contrition.
What makes it work is the unresolved tension. Card doesn't offer a clean ethic for when anger is a badge of honor versus a warning sign. He offers the more honest reality: the creator's oscillation between righteous defiance and a very human wish for quiet.
The line "rather proud" does double duty. It signals a writer's appetite for provocation (art that lands should land hard), but it also confesses the dopamine hit of outrage economics: if "loathsome people or groups" are furious, you must be doing something right. That framing is deliberately self-protective. It casts critics not as interlocutors but as evidence, converting dissent into validation. In a polarized culture, that's a powerful insulation tactic: you don't have to answer arguments if you can classify the arguer.
Then comes the wobble: "at other times I wonder why I put up with such grief". The bravado collapses into fatigue, and the quote becomes less a manifesto than a glimpse of the emotional overhead of visibility. Card is writing from the position of a successful genre author who has been intensely debated not just for craft but for beliefs and public statements. The subtext is that controversy isn't abstract; it's inboxes, boycotts, invitations rescinded, fans demanding purity, strangers demanding contrition.
What makes it work is the unresolved tension. Card doesn't offer a clean ethic for when anger is a badge of honor versus a warning sign. He offers the more honest reality: the creator's oscillation between righteous defiance and a very human wish for quiet.
Quote Details
| Topic | Resilience |
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