# The Telling

- Author: [Ursula K. Le Guin](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin.md)
- Quotes: 8
- Book page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/the-telling

## Quotes

> She had come to Aka to learn how to sing this world's tune, to dance its dance; and at last, she thought, away from the city's endless noise, she was beginning to hear the music and to learn how to move to it.

p. 91 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/the-telling/she-had-come.md)

> She was not so naive as to think there was any necessary relation between religion and morality, or that if there was a relation it was likely to be a benevolent one.

p. 109 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/the-telling/she-was-not.md)

> Most civilisations, perhaps, look shinier in general terms and from several light-years away.

p. 32 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/the-telling/most-civilisations-perhaps.md)

> Where my guides lead me in kindness
>
> I follow, follow lightly,
>
> and there are no footprints
>
> in the dust behind us.

p. 72 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/the-telling/where-my-guides.md)

> One of the historians of Darranda said: To learn a belief without belief is to sing a song without the tune.
>
> A yielding, an obedience, a willingness to accept these notes as the right notes, this pattern as the true pattern, is the essential gesture of performance, translation, and understanding. The gesture need not be permanent, a lasting posture of the mind or heart, yet it is not false. It is more than the suspension of disbelief needed to watch a play, yet less than the conversion. It is a position, a posture in the dance.

p. 90 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/the-telling/one-of-the.md)

> By such literalism, fundamentalism, religions betrayed the best intentions of their founders. Reducing thought to formula, replacing choice by obedience, these preachers turned the living word into dead law.

p. 123 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/the-telling/by-such-literalism.md)

> "We're not outside the world, yoz. You know? We are the world. We're its language. So we live and it lives. You see?"

p. 133 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/the-telling/were-not-outside.md)

> On Aka, god is a word without referent. No capital letters. No creator, only creation. No eternal father to reward and punish, justify injustice, ordain cruelty, offer salvation. Eternity not an endpoint but a continuity. Primal division of being into material and spiritual only as two-as-one, or one in two aspects. [...] The Akan system is a spiritual discipline with spiritual goals, but they're exactly the same goals it seeks for bodily and ethical well-being. Right action is its own reward. Dharma without karma.

p. 94 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/the-telling/on-aka-god.md)