01c. 1973 ADWhat is an anarchist? One who, choosing, accepts the responsibility of choice.Ursula K. Le Guin / quote ↗
03c. 1973 AD«I am tired,» he said. «I did a lot today. That is, I did something. The only thing I have ever done. I pressed a button. It took the entire will power, the accumulated strength of my entire existence, to press one damned OFF button.»«You have lived well,» the Alien said.Ursula K. Le Guin / quote ↗
04c. 1973 ADNothing said in words ever came out quite even. Things in words got twisted and ran together, instead of staying straight and fitting together.Ursula K. Le Guin / quote ↗
06c. 1973 ADOther people's stories may become part of your own, the foundation of it, the ground it goes on.Ursula K. Le Guin / quote ↗
07c. 1973 ADPride kept her from confiding in the other girls, and caution kept her from confessing to the older women.Ursula K. Le Guin / quote ↗
08c. 1973 ADHe, after all, had no standards of manliness, of virility, to complicate his pride.Ursula K. Le Guin / quote ↗
09c. 1973 ADUntil then I had rejected him, refused him his own reality. He had been quite right to say that he, the only person on Gethen who trusted him, was the only Gethenian I distrusted. For he was the only one who had entirely accepted me as a human being: who had liked me personally and given met entire personal loyalty: and who therefore had demanded of me an equal degree of recognition, of acceptance. I had not been willing to give it. I had been afraid to give it. I had not wanted to give my trust, my friendship to a man who was a woman, a woman who was a man.Ursula K. Le Guin / quote ↗
10c. 1973 ADTenar, I go where I am sent. I follow my calling. It has not yet let me stay in any land for long. Do you see that? I do what I must do. Where I go, I must go alone. So long as you need me, I’ll be with you in Havnor. And if you ever need me again, call me. I will come. I would come from my grave if you called me, Tenar! But I cannot stay with you.Ursula K. Le Guin / quote ↗
11c. 1973 ADThe nod of a head is such a small thing, it can mean so little, yet it is the gesture of assent that allows, that makes to be. The nod is the gesture of power, the yes. The numen. the presence of the sacred, is called by its name.Ursula K. Le Guin / quote ↗
13c. 1973 ADI have this, this gift, I know that; and I know my obligation to it.Ursula K. Le Guin / quote ↗
15c. 1973 ADThe doctor was not, he thought, really sure that anyone else existed, and wanted to prove they did by helping them.Ursula K. Le Guin / quote ↗
16c. 1973 ADSo the first step out of childhood is made all at once, without looking before or behind, without caution, and nothing held in reserve.Ursula K. Le Guin / quote ↗
17c. 1973 ADIf nobody teaches us the words, the thoughts, we stay ignorant. If nobody shows a little child, two, three years old, how to look for the way, the signs of the path, the landmarks, then it gets lost in the mountain, doesn't it? And dies in the night, in the cold.Ursula K. Le Guin / quote ↗
18c. 1973 ADAs a boy, Ogion like all boys had thought it would be a very pleasant game to take by art-magic whatever shape one liked, man or beast, tree or cloud, and so to play at a thousand beings. But as a wizard he had learned the price of the game, which is the peril of losing one's self, playing away the truth. The longer a man stays in a form not his own, the greater this peril. Every prentice-sorcerer learns the tale of the wizard Bordger of Way, who delighted in taking bear's shape, and did so more and more often until the bear grew in him and the man died away, and he became a bear, and killed his own little son in the forests, and was hunted down and slain. And no one knows how many of the dolphins that leap in the waters of the Inmost Sea were men once, wise men, who forgot their wisdom and their name in the joy of the restless sea.Ursula K. Le Guin / quote ↗
19c. 1973 ADI never thought before,” said Tirin unruffled, “of the fact that there are people sitting on a hill, up there, on Urras, looking at Anarres, at us, and saying, ‘Look, there’s the Moon.’ Our earth is their Moon; our Moon is their earth.” “Where, then, is Truth?” declaimed Bedap, and yawned. “In the hill one happens to be sitting on,” said Tirin.Ursula K. Le Guin / quote ↗
21c. 1973 ADThere was something lacking – in him, he thought, not in the place. He was not up to it. He was not strong enough to take what was so generously offered. He felt himself dry and arid, like a desert plant, in this beautiful oasis. Life on Anarres had sealed him, closed off his soul; the waters of life welled all around him, and yet he could not drink.Ursula K. Le Guin / quote ↗
22c. 1973 ADGrieving, like being blind, is a strange business; you have to learn how to do it. We seek company in mourning, but after the early bursts of tears, after the praises have been spoken, and the good days remembered, and the lament cried, and the grave closed, there is no company in grief. It is a burden borne alone.Ursula K. Le Guin / quote ↗
