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Until then I had rejected him, refused him his own reality. He had been quite right to say that he, the only person on Gethen who trusted him, was the...more

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Ged saw all these things from outside and apart, alone, and his heart was very heavy in him, though he would not admit to himself that he was sad. As ...more

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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 was with you at the beginning of your journey. It is right that I should follow you to its end.

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Oh, Hank," Susan whispered, "their wings are furry.""Oh, James," Harriet whispered, "their hands are kind.

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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...

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

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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