Living, being in the world, was a much greater and stranger thing than she had ever dreamed.
Little children are stoical. They cry over bumps, but they take the big things as they come, they don't whine like so many adults.
Later, when Ged thought back upon that night, he knew that had none touched him when he lay thus spirit-lost, had none called him back in some way, he might have been lost for good. It was only the du...
Kemmer is not always played by pairs. Pairing seems to be the commonest custom, but in the kemmerhouses of towns and cities, groups may form and intercourse take place promiscuously among the males an...
It is not altogether a bad thing to have criminal ancestors. An arsonist grandfather may bequeath one a nose for smelling smoke.
If it were proven that there is no God there would be no religion... But also if it were proven that there is a God, there would be no religion.
I expect it will turn out that sexual intercourse is possible between Gethenian double-sexed and Hainish-norm one-sexed human beings, though such intercourse will inevitably be sterile. It remains to...
He saw time turn back upon itself, a river flowing upward to the spring. He held the contemporaneity of two moments in his left and right hands; as he moved them apart he smiled to see the moments sep...
For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while ano...
But even the most unmissionary soul, unless he pretend he has no emotions, is sometimes faced with a choice between commission and omission. 'What are they doing?' abruptly becomes, 'What are we doing...
A key is a little thing next to the door that it opens. If you lose the key, the door may never be unlocked.
Until 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...
Meeting writers is always so disappointing. I got over wanting to meet live writers quite a long time ago. There is this terrific book that has changed your life, and then you meet the author, and he...
As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing a Bach suite participates, note by note, in the creation, the coming-to-be, the existence,...
We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.
İkisi de ayrılık yüzünden acı çekmişlerdi, epeyce acı çekmişlerdi, ama ikisi de bağlılıklarından kaçarak acıyı reddetmeyi düşünmemişlerdi.
With eye and hand and breath and will.
Who knows a man's name, holds that man's life in his keeping. Thus to Ged, who had lost faith in himself, Vetch had given him that gift that only a friend can give, the proof of unshaken, unshakeable...
Which of us saved the other from the Labyrinth, Ged?
We’re in the world, not against it. It doesn’t work to try to stand outside things and run them that way. It just doesn’t work, it goes against life. There is a way but you have to follow it. The worl...