"

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

"

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

"

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

"

Not even need and love can defeat fate...

"

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

"

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

"

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

"

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

"

Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.

"

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

"

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

"

Page 15, paperback version by Virago Press 1997: ... Let me ask you this, Mr Ai: do you know, by your own experience, what patriotism is?” ‘No’, I sai...more

"

I wondered, not for the first time, what patriotism is, what the love of country truly consists of, how that yearning loyalty that had shaken my frien...more

"

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

"

And I wondered, not for the first time, what patriotism is, what the love of country truly consists of, how that yearning loyalty that had shaken my f...more