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6bbfe9c
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Though I had been nearly two years on Winter I was still far from being able to see the people of the planet through their own eyes. I tried to, but my efforts took the form of self-consciously seeing a Gethenian first as a man, then as a woman, forcing him into those categories so irrelevant to his nature and so essential to my own.
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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3dcb98c
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Though I had been nearly two years on Winter I was still far from being able to see the people of the planet through their own eyes. I tried to, but my efforts took the form of self-consciously seeing a Gethenian first as a man, then as a woman, forcing him into those categories so irrelevant to his nature and so essential to my own. Thus as I sipped my smoking sour beer I thought that at table Estraven's performance had been womanly, all c..
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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cfcc663
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It is a durable, ubiquitous, specious metaphor, that one about veneer (or paint, or pliofilm, or whatever) hiding the nobler reality beneath. It can conceal a dozen fallacies at once. One of the most dangerous is the implication that civilization, being artificial, is unnatural: that it is the opposite of primitiveness. . . . Of course there is no veneer, the process is one of growth, and primitiveness and civilization are degrees of the sa..
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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55980c7
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People who sleep only two or three hours in the twenty-four are always geniuses. The ones you hear about, anyway. Never mind if the ones you don't hear about are dolts. Insomnia is genius. It must be. Think of all the work you could do the thoughts you could think, the books you could read, the love you could make, while the dull clods lie snoring.
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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9cebf1a
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How does one hate a country, or love one? Tibe talks about it; I lack the trick of it. I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one's country; is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's ..
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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1fc5b1d
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Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new. When
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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3034483
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Orr's gods were nameless and unenvious, asking neither worship nor obedience. "Yet"
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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3378e5f
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Stealthily the stars slid forward into nothingness.
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night
stars
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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5940e66
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Cum poti sa urasti o tara sau sa iubesti alta? Tibe vorbeste despre asemenea lucruri, eu n-am abilitatea lui. Eu cunosc oameni, orase, ferme, dealuri, rauri si stanci. Stiu cum, toamna, razele amurgului scalda un luminis pe o colina. Dar ce rost are sa inconjuri toate aceste lucruri cu o granita, sa le dai un nume si sa te opresti cu iubirea acolo unde numele inceteaza? Daca iti iubesti tara inseamna sa urasti netara? Atunci nu-i bine. E o ..
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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3095d01
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We left with empty hands, a hundred and seventy years ago, and we were right. We took nothing. Because there is nothing here but States and their weapons, the rich and their lies, and the poor and their misery. There is no way to act rightly, with a clear heart, on Urras. There is nothing you can do that profit does not enter into, and fear of loss, and the wish for power. You cannot say good morning without knowing which of you is 'superio..
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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bf9cff1
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I walk on the ground and the ground's walked on by me, I breathe the air and change it, I am entirely interconnected with the world. Only
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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9d13828
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He thought, I am living in a nightmare, from which from time to time I wake in sleep.
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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a5470ad
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No one else, no thing even, has an existence of its own for him; he sees the world only as a means to his end. It doesn't make any difference if his end is good; means are all we've got ...
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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9527bc5
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What will the creature made all of sea-drift do on the dry sand of daylight; what will the mind do, each morning, waking? His
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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b2d8795
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white-skinned,
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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15b1756
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He explained to Atro that he now understood why the army was organized as it was. It was indeed quite necessary. No rational form of organization would serve the purpose. He simply had not understood that the purpose was to enable men with machine guns to kill unarmed men and women easily and in great quantities when told to do so. Only he still could not see where courage, or manliness, or fitness entered in. He
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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28ebbbc
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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. But
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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9b44ded
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If the rowan's roots are shallow, it bears no crown.
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future
heritage
legacy
metaphor
past
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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1e3357c
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To hear, one must be silent.' The
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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9b165da
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Lloro por los anos que habia perdido esclavizada a un mal inutil. Lloraba de dolor, porque era libre.
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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5f9d48c
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what I told them was 'a poem,' a thing made by a maker, a work of art, part history of long ago, part invention.
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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c1cd707
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'They eat their kind,' he said, 'Like men.'
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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55a523c
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H.G. Wells said] that his method was "to trick his reader into an unwary concession to some plausible assumption and get on with his story while the illusion holds." Such prestidigitation is a characteristic ploy of science fiction: to make a nonexistent entity or impossible premise acceptable (often by scientific-sounding terms such as telepathy, extraterrestrial, cavorite, FTL speed) and then follow through with a genuinely realistic, log..
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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4e36268
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Deux etres unis par un profond amour n'ont-ils pas des chances de se faire mal non moins profondement? N'en ont-ils pas le pouvoir?
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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9617184
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Everything is old, here. We are old - the Masters.
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experienced
old-age
travel
wisdom
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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1175a05
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What good seeking the safe course, on a journey such as this? There are senseless courses, which I shall not take; but there is no safe one. Streth
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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871db75
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His efforts to break out of his essential seclusion were, in fact, a failure, and he knew it. He made no close friend. He copulated with a number of girls, but copulation was not the joy it ought to be. It was a mere relief of need, and he felt ashamed of it afterward because it involved another person as object. Masturbation was preferable, the suitable course for a man like himself. Solitude was his fate; he was trapped by his heredity. S..
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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5989f66
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Somehow is a super-weasel, a word that betrays that the author didn't want to bother thinking out the story--"Somehow"
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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3436d93
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don't know if our life has a purpose and I don't see that it matters. What does matter is that we're a part. Like a thread in a cloth or a grass-blade in a field. It is and we are. What we do is like wind blowing on the grass.
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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685dfd8
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To be, the will to power must increase with each fulfillment, making the fulfillment only a step to a further one. The vaster the power gained, the vaster the appetite for more.
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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ad69332
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They argued because they liked argument, liked the swift run of the unfettered mind along the paths of possibility, liked to question what was not questioned. They were intelligent, their minds were already disciplined to the clarity of science, and they were sixteen years old. But at this point the pleasure of the argument ceased for Shevek, as it had earlier for Kvetur. He was disturbed.
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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6272c2c
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Pravic was not a good swearing language. It is hard to swear when sex is not dirty and blasphemy does not exist.
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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e3ad73c
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Le Guin's Rule: One person cannot do two fulltime jobs, but two persons can do three fulltime jobs -- if they honestly share the work.
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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45f5789
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Cinders patter, falling with the snow. We creep infinitesimally northward through the dirty chaos of a world in the process of making itself. Praise then Creation unfinished!
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creation
forces-of-nature
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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a6e58fb
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I had believed that justice could exist in a society founded on injustice.
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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522016f
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Nar vi ovat nagot blir vara handlingar starka och nar djupt. Nar vi inte kanner ratta kursen blir vi forvirrade. Gar vilse, forslosar vart arv.
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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4e60f72
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I was alone, with a stranger, inside the walls of a dark palace, in a strange snow-changed city, in the heart of the Ice Age of an alien world.
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stranger-in-a-strange-land
winter
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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76119b8
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He was appalled by the examination system, when it was explained to him; he could not imagine a greater deterrent to the natural wish to learn than this pattern of cramming in information and disgorging it at demand.
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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eae1f2e
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If you can see a thing whole," he said, "it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives...But close up, a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful the earth is, is to see the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death."
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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4e4338b
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To oppose something is to maintain it.
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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8969e55
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Hate Orgoreyn? No, how should I? How does one hate a country, or love one? Tibe talks about it; I lack the trick of it. I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one's country; is it ha..
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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d96f58a
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stepped out of the tent on to nothing. Sledge and tent were there, Estraven stood beside me, but neither he nor I cast any shadow. There was dull light all around, everywhere. When he walked on the crisp snow no shadow showed the footprint. We left no track. Sledge, tent, himself, myself: nothing else at all. No sun, no sky, no horizon, no world. A whitish-grey void, in which we appeared to hang. The illusion was so complete that I had trou..
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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8b11255
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It's queer that daylight's not enough. We need the shadows, in order to walk.
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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9fd2771
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Lo que estaba empezando a descubrir era el peso de la libertad. La libertad es una carga pesada, extrana y abrumadora para el espiritu que ha de llevarla. No es comoda. No es un regalo que se recibe, sino una eleccion que se hace, y la eleccion puede ser dificil. El camino asciende hacia la luz; pero el viajero que soporta la carga acaso no llegue jamas a la meta.
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Ursula K. Le Guin |