Ursula K. Le Guin
Quotes
“She obeys me, but only because she wants to.”
“It’s the only justification for obedience,” Ged observed.
A great deal of her obscurity and cant, Tenar had begun to realize, was mere ineptness with words and ideas. Nobody had ever taught her to think consecutively. Nobody had ever listened to what she said. All that was expected, all that was wanted of her was muddle, mystery, mumbling. She was a witchwoman. She had nothing to do with clear meaning.
It’s not a weapon or a woman can make a man, or magery either, or any power, anything but himself.
A wrong that cannot be repaired must be transcended.
Her left hand reminded her of its existence, and she looked round to see what was scratching the heel of her hand. It was a tiny thistle, crouched in a crack in the sandstone, barely lifting its colorless spikes into the light and wind. It nodded stiffly as the wind blew, resisting the wind, rooted in rock. She gazed at it for a long time.
“Is it different, then, for men and for women?”
“What isn’t, dearie?”
If they come prying they can leave curious.
“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.”
Despair speaks evenly, in a quiet voice.
So the first step out of childhood is made all at once, without looking before or behind, without caution, and nothing held in reserve.
No, I don’t understand him, but he is worth listening to.
