The Dispossessed (Hainish Cycle)

The thing about working with time, instead of against it, he thought, is that it is not wasted. Even pain counts.

“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 it as the moon. The way to see how beautiful life i

The usage the creator spirit gives its vessels is rough, it wears them out, discards them, gets a new model.

“It’s always easier not to think for oneself. Find a nice safe hierarchy and settle in. Don’t make changes, don’t risk disapproval, don’t upset your syndics. It’s always easiest to let yourself be governed.”

You can’t crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them. By refusing to think, refusing to change.

“Excess is excrement,” Odo wrote in the Analogy. “Excrement retained in the body is a poison.”

The sunlights differ, but there is only one darkness.

‘break’ a custom; it’s the framework of your life with other people.

“I thought I knew what ‘realism’ was,” Keng said. She smiled, but it was not an easy smile. “How can you, if you don’t know what hope is?”