Ursula K. Le Guin
US-based author, known mostly for writing science fiction and fantasy.
“In innocence there is no strength against evil,” said Sparrowhawk, a little wryly. “But there is strength in it for good.”
Injustice makes the rules, and courage breaks them.
“It is not right to want to die,” the Summoner said....“For the very old, the very ill, it may be. But life is given us. Surely it’s wrong not to hold and treasure that great gift!”
“Death also is given us,” said the king.
All I know is the dark, the night underground. And that’s all there really is. That’s all there is to know, in the end. The silence, and the dark. You know everything, wizard. But I know one thing—the one true thing!
Statesmen remember things selectively.
“For a word to be spoken,” Ged answered slowly, “there must be silence. Before, and after.” Then all at once he got up, saying, “I have no right to speak of these things. The word that was mine to say I said wrong. It is better that I keep still; I will not speak again. Maybe there is no true power but the dark.”
I forgot, being too interested myself, that he’s a king, and does not see things rationally, but as a king.
“There’s nothing to fear, Lebannen,” he said gently, mockingly. “They were only the dead.”
There’s seldom as much hurry as I used to think there was.
The world’s vast and strange, Hara, but no vaster and no stranger than our minds are. Think of that sometimes.
What's to gain by silence?
All or nothing at all, the true lover says, and that’s the truth of it. My love will never die, he says. He claims eternity. And rightly. How can it die when it’s life itself? What do we know of eternity but the glimpse we get of it when we enter in that bond?
“Long ago we parted,” said the slight, still man of the Fiia. “Longer ago we were one. What we are not, they are. What we are, they are not. Think of the sunlight and the grass and the trees that bear fruit, Semley; think that not all roads that lead down lead up as well.”
The old knowledge had been difficult but not distressing. It had been all paradox and myth, and it had made sense. The new knowledge was all fact and reason, and it made no sense.
And I know that all I understand about living is having your work to do, and being able to do it. That’s the pleasure, and the glory, and all. And if you can’t do the work, or it’s taken from you, then what’s any good? You have to have something....
She knew it, but she did not want to know it.
We of Es Toch tell a little myth, which says that in the beginning the Creator told a great lie. For there was nothing at all, but the Creator spoke, saying, It exists. And behold, in order that the lie of God might be God’s truth, the universe at once began to exist.
He detested them for forcing helplessness upon him.