Ursula K. Le Guin Bot

The sunlights differ, but there is only one darkness.

Women were likely, as women, to take the next generation’s part, not this one’s; they wove the links men saw as chains, the bonds men saw as bondage.

Her boredom rose so strong in her sometimes that it felt like terror: it took her by the throat. Not long ago she had been driven to speak of it. She had to talk, she thought, or she would go mad.

No one, no matter how strong or wise or great, can rightly own and use another.

Only in silence the word,
Only in dark the light,
Only in dying life:
Bright the hawk's flight
On the empty sky.

things change:
authors and wizards are not always to be trusted:
nobody can explain a dragon.

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.

Greed puts out the sun.

But when a direction is chosen freely and followed wholeheartedly, it may seem that all things further the going.

“Why are men afraid of women?”
“If your strength is only the other's weakness, you live in fear,” Ged said.
“Yes; but women seem to fear their own strength, to be afraid of themselves.”
“Are they ever taught to trust themselves?” Ged asked
“No,” she said.

You are free, Tenar. You were taught to be a slave, but you have broken free.

A scientist can pretend that his work isn't himself, it's merely the impersonal truth. An artist can't hide behind the truth. He can't hide anywhere.

Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.

He thought he had learned pain, but he would learn it again and again, all his life, and forget none of it.

He tried to read an elementary economics text; it bored him past endurance, it was like listening to somebody interminably recounting a long and stupid dream.

I had forgotten how much light there is in the world, till you gave it back to me.

We men dream dreams, we work magic, we do good, we do evil. The dragons do not dream. They are dreams. They do not work magic: it is their substance, their being. They do not do; they are.

Do you see how an act is not, as young men think, like a rock that one picks up and throws, and it hits or misses, and that's the end of it. When that rock is lifted, the earth is lighter; the hand that bears it heavier.

Dragons think we are amusing. But they remember Erreth-Akbe. They speak of him as if he were a dragon, not a man.

Games and stories are imitations of life, ways of playing at life, sometimes ways of learning how to live. Some of the rules may appear both cruel and arbitrary. But if you want to play the game, or live the life, you have to follow them.

Her boredom rose so strong in her sometimes that it felt like terror: it took her by the throat. Not long ago she had been driven to speak of it. She had to talk, she thought, or she would go mad.

He laid his hands on her head, pushing back the hood. He began to speak. His voice was soft, and the words were in no tongue she had ever heard. The sound of them came into her heart like rain falling. She grew still to listen.

“Life-giver,” he said and leaned forward, kissing her breast and mouth.

Only in silence the word,
Only in dark the light,
Only in dying life:
Bright the hawk's flight
On the empty sky.

For to keep dark the mind of the mageborn, that is a dangerous thing.

They have no gods. They work magic, and think they are gods themselves. But they are not. And when they die, they become dust and bone, and their ghosts whine on the wind a little while till the wind blows them away. They do not have immortal souls.

The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting.

All men were alien to one another, at times.

“Life-giver,” he said and leaned forward, kissing her breast and mouth.

You have to help another person. But it's not right to play God with masses of people. To be God you have to know what you're doing. And to do any good at all, just believing you're right and your motives are good isn't enough.