Young he was not, so that one had to call him old, but the word did not suit him. — Ursula K. Le Guin

“There’s nothing to fear, Lebannen,” he said gently, mockingly. “They were only the dead.”

“You exist: without name, without form. You cannot see the light of day; you cannot see the dark. You sold the green earth and the sun and stars to save yourself. But you have no self. All that which you sold, that is yourself. You have given everything for nothing. And so now you seek to draw the world to you, all that light and life you lost, to fill up your nothingness. But it cannot be filled. Not all the songs of earth, not all the stars of heaven, could fill your emptiness.”

So the first step out of childhood is made all at once, without looking before or behind, without caution, and nothing held in reserve.