245 quotes
To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.
The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
To think that realistic fiction is by definition superior to imaginative fiction is to think imitation is superior to invention.
“Is it different, then, for men and for women?”
“What isn’t, dearie?”
Tehanu (1990)
The name of our beautiful reward is not profit. Its name is freedom.
One man may as easily destroy, as govern: be King or Anti-King.
The Farthest Shore (1972)
Men who fight wars in Winter don’t live till Spring.
Planet of Exile (1966)
“And your soul is in your body.”
“Such as tripe?”
Changing Planes (2003)
Morning comes whether you set the alarm or not.
Dancing at the Edge of the World (1989)
There is not much good spending twelve hours a day in a black hole in the ground all your life long if there’s nothing there, no secret, no treasure, nothing hidden.
The Wind’s Twelve Quarters (1975)
The world’s vast and strange, Hara, but no vaster and no stranger than our minds are. Think of that sometimes.
The Other Wind (2001)
The individual cannot bargain with the State. The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coins itself.
The Dispossessed (1974)
Obsessed with tricking the girl, he had fallen into the trap he laid for her. Bitterly he recognised that he was always believing his own lies, caught in nets he had elaborately woven.
Tales from Earthsea (2001)
The Veksi are an angry species. Their social life consists largely of arguments, recriminations, quarrels, fights, outbursts of fury, fits of the sulks, brawls, feuds, and impulsive acts of vengeance.
Changing Planes (2003)
Men are afraid of virgins, but they have a cure for their own fear and the virgin's virginity: fucking.
Dancing at the Edge of the World (1989)
Living, being in the world, was a much greater and stranger thing than she had ever dreamed.
The Tombs of Atuan (1971)
All men were alien one to another, at times, not only aliens.
Planet of Exile (1966)
She too had lost her luck, and known death, and gone on.
The Eye of the Heron (1978)
“The mission I am on overrides all personal debts and loyalties.”
“If so,” said the stranger with fierce certainty, “it is an immoral mission.”
The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
To be whole is to be part;
true voyage is return.
The Dispossessed (1974)
Armed men don’t sit down and talk.
The Eye of the Heron (1978)