The question was where to start. Where to build up a solid foundation of knowledge on which you could balance ideas. It wasn’t exactly a modest ambition. But what I had learned from Natalie was that y...
The quality and virtue of a slave is invisibility. The powerless need to be invisible even to themselves.
The opposite of spare time is, I guess, occupied time. In my case I still don’t know what spare time is because all my time is occupied. It always has been and it is now. It’s occupied by living. An i...
The only emotion I felt was shame. For him, for myself. Again I had trusted, and again I had betrayed and been betrayed. Venne
The offer of a generous spirit is not one to refuse lightly.
The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.
The moths look like souls in the underworld,
The most winning characteristic of the rather harsh Cetian temperament was curiosity, inopportune, and inexhaustible curiosity; Cetians died eagerly, curious as to what came next.
The moment was gone; he saw it going. He did not try to hold on to it. He knew he was part of it, not it of him. He was in its keeping.
The light is the left hand of darkness
The life of every man is in the Center of Time, for all were seen in the seeing of Meshe, and are in his eye. We are the pupils of his Eye... Our doing is his Seeing: our being is his Knowing.
The horses wore no gear at all but a halter without bit. Their manes were braided with streamers of silver, gold, and green. They flared their nostrils and pranced and boasted to one another; they wer...
The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means. Orr
The elimination of war. Did the Ancient Hainish postulate that continuous sexual capacity and organized social aggression, neither of which are attributes of any mammal but man, are cause and effect?
The discovery brings him victory, the kind of victory that isn’t the end of a battle but the beginning of a life.
The autumn stars had come out, incredible in number and brilliance, twinkling and almost blinking because of the dust stirred up by the earthquake and the wind, so that the whole sky seemed to tremble...
The author is not impartial. Dystopia is not tragedy.
The art of one's own time tends to be formidable . . . because we have to learn how and where to take hold of it, what response is being asked of us, before we can get involved. It's truly new, and th...
The Owl thinks slowly, but the Owl thinks long.
The Gethenians do not see one another as men or women. This is almost impossible for our imaginations to accept. After all, what is the first question we ask about a newborn baby? ....there is no divi...