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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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With ceremony, with forms of politeness and reassurance, they borrowed the waters of the River and its little confluents to drink and be clean and irr...more

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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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You are rich. You own. We are poor. We lack. You have. We do not have. Everything is beautiful here, only not the faces. On Anarres nothing is beautif...more

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I think men mostly have to learn to be anarchists. Women don’t have to learn.”Vokep shook his head grimly. “It’s the kids,” he said. “Having babies. M...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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The quality of the will to power is, precisely, growth. Achievement is its cancellation. To be, the will to power must increase with each fulfillment,...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.