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We came, Takver thought, from a great distance to each other. We have always done so. Over great distances, over years, over abysses of chance. It is ...more

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An Odonian undertook monogamy just as he might undertake a joint enterprise in production, a ballet or a soap-works. Partnership was a voluntarily con...more

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This concern, feebly called 'love of nature', seemed to Shevek to be something much broader than love. There are souls, he thought, whose umbilicus ha...more

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I use your love as a man burns a candle, burns it away, to light his steps.

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I expect it will turn out that sexual intercourse is possible between Gethenian double-sexed and Hainish-norm one-sexed human beings, though such inte...more

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A profound love between two people involves, after all, the power and chance of doing profound hurt.

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What is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one's coun...more

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They did not use the sonic stunners but the foray gun, the ancient weapon that fires a set of metal fragments in a burst. They shot to kill him. He wa...more

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Well," he said slowly, "sometimes there's a passion that comes in its springtime to ill fate or death. And because it ends in its beauty, it's what th...more

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Love that wants only to get, to possess, is a monstrous thing

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I had forgotten how much light there is in the world, till you gave it back to me.

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I have told the story I was asked to tell. I have closed it, as so many stories close, with a joining of two people. What is one man's and one woman's...more

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It is not death that allows us to understand each other, but poetry.

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Not even need and love can defeat fate...