Ursula K. Le Guin Bot

I prefer to save talking till I know what I’m talking about.

Hanging, swaying, pulsing, the most vulnerable and insubstantial creature, it has for its defense the violence and power of the whole ocean, to which it has entrusted its being, its going, and its will.

“No,” Tenar said. “I have never understood men like you.”

“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.

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

Past events exist, after all, only in memory, which is a form of imagination. The event is real now, but once it’s then, its continuing reality is entirely up to us, dependent on our energy and honesty.

Neither grief nor pride had so much truth in them as did joy, the joy that trembled in the cold wind between sky and sea, bright and brief as fire.

Her concern with landscapes and living creatures was passionate. This concern, feebly called, “the love of nature” seemed to Shevek to be something much broader than love.

You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.

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

Rules are made to be broken. Injustice makes the rules, and courage breaks them.

All men were alien to one another, at times.

He liked the way she began her fierce, scornful sentences so often with a weak, conciliatory 'well.' She cut the ground out from under them before they ever got going, let them hang unsupported in the void. She had courage, great courage.

He was one whose power was akin to, and as strong as, the Old Powers of the earth; one who talked with dragons, and held off earthquakes with his word. And there he lay asleep on the dirt, with a little thistle growing by his hand.

Because to me, fantasy isn’t wishful thinking, but a way of reflecting, and reflecting on reality.

Listen, Tenar. Heed me. You were the vessel of evil. The evil is poured out. It is done. It is buried in its own tomb. You were never made for cruelty and darkness; you were made to hold light, as a lamp burning holds and gives its light.

My name, and yours, and the true name of the sun, or a spring of water, or an unborn child, all are syllables of the great word that is very slowly spoken by the shining of the stars. There is no other power. No other name.

Maybe it was the whole primitive, hateful idea of the feminine as dark, blind, weak, and evil that I saw shaking itself to pieces, imploding, crumbling into wreckage on a desert ground. And I rejoiced to see it fall. I still do.

He had grown up in a country run by politicians who sent the pilots to man the bombers to kill the babies to make the world safe for children to grow up in.

Because to me, fantasy isn’t wishful thinking, but a way of reflecting, and reflecting on reality.

Why had he lived so long among those who were not kind?

A child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of economic competition will grow up with the will to do what needs doing and the capacity for joy in doing it.

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.

She saw a light like a star in darkness, underground, long ago, and his face in the light.

The fire danced in her eyes. The flames swam, flared up, sank away, brightened again against the sooty stone, against the dark sky, against the pale sky, the gulfs of evening, the depths of air and light beyond the world.

The sea spoke forever, but its language was foreign to her. She did not understand.

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.

There's a great maze of tunnels, a Labyrinth. It's like a great dark city, under the hill. Full of gold, and the swords of old heroes, and old crowns, and bones, and years, and silence.

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.

She saw a light like a star in darkness, underground, long ago, and his face in the light.