The Wind's Twelve Quarters Quotes

“We all have forests in our minds. Forests unexplored, unending. Each one of us gets lost in the forest, every night, alone.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters

“Love that wants only to get, to possess, is a monstrous thing”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters

“He had been trying to measure the distance between the earth and God.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters

“I don't know. We're each of us alone, to be sure. What can you do but hold your hand out in the dark?”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters

“It is hard to meet a stranger. Even the greatest extravert meeting even the meekest stranger knows a certain dread, though he may not know he knows it. Will he make a fool of me wreck my image of myself invade me destroy me change me? Yes, that he will. There's the terrible thing: the strangeness of the stranger.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters

“This was a great magic. Festin had no more performed it than has any man who in exile or danger longs for the earth and waters of his home, seeing and yearning over the doorsill of his house, the table where he has eaten, the branches outside the window of the room where he has slept. Only in dreams do any but the great Mages realize this magic of going home.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters

“Life loves to know itself, out to its furthest limits; to embrace complexity is its delight. Our difference is our beauty.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters

“Mede stood accused of heresy. He had been seen out on the fields pointing an instrument at the Sun, a device, they said, for measuring distances. He had been trying to measure the distance between the earth and God.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters

“Where do you get your ideas from, Ms Le Guin?' From forgetting Dostoyevsky and reading road signs backwards, naturally. Where else?”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters

“Professor Barry Pennywither sat in a cold, shadowy garret and stared at the table in front of him, on which lay a book and a breadcrust. The bread had been his dinner, the book had been his lifework. Both were dry.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters

“No harmony endures,” said the young king. “None has ever been achieved,” said the Plenipotentiary. “The pleasure is in trying.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters

“It is hard to meet a stranger. Even the greatest extravert meeting even the meekest stranger knows a certain dread, though he may not know he knows it. Will he make a fool of me wreck my image of myself invade me destroy me change me? Will he be different from me? Yes, that he will. There’s the terrible thing: the strangeness of the stranger.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters

“Gerçekliğin korkunç adaletini anlamaya başlayıp kabullenince bu acı adaletsizlik için akıttıkları gözyaşları kurur. Yine de gözyaşları ve öfkeleri, iyiliklerini sınamaları ve çaresizliklerini kabullenmeleridir belki de yaşamlarındaki ihtişamın gerçek kaynağı. Mutlulukları ruhsuz, sorumsuz bir mutluluk değildir. Çocuk gibi kendilerinin de özgür olmadıklarını bilirler. Duygudaşlığı bilirler.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters

“Ebediyet beni ilgilendirmez. Ben bir meşeyim, ne bir eksik ne bir fazla. Bir görevim var ve yerine getiriyorum; hoşlandığım şeyler var ve onlardan keyif alıyorum. Gerçi sayıca azaldılar. Çünkü kuşlar da azaldı. Hem, rüzgâr da berbat kokuyor artık. Tamam, uzun ömürlüyüm ama benim de geçici bir şey olmaya hakkım var. Ölümlü olma ayrıcalığım var. Oysa bu ayrıcalık elimden alındı.
...
Dünya da ölümü gözleriyle görmek isteyen varsa bu onların sorunu, benim değil. Onlar için Ebediyet'i oynayamam. Ölüm isteyen, ağaçlara başvurmasın. Görmek istedikleri o ise, birbirlerinin gözlerine baksınlar ve ölümü orada görsünler.

│ Rüzgarın On İki Yakası - Yolun Yönü”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters

“Of course I didn't read James and sit down and say, Now I'll write a story about that “lost soul.” It seldom works that simply.

I sat down and started a story, just because I felt like it, with nothing but the word “Omelas” in mind. It came from a road sign: Salem (Oregon) backwards. Don't you read road signs backwards? POTS. WOLS nerdlihc. Ocsicnarf Nas... Salem equals schelomo equals salaam equals Peace. Melas. O melas. Omelas. Homme helas.

“Where do you get your ideas from, Ms Le Guin?” From forgetting Dostoyevsky and reading road signs backwards, naturally. Where else?”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters

“Odonianism is anarchism. Not the bomb-in-the-pocket stuff, which is terrorism, whatever name it tries to dignify itself with; not the social-Darwinist economic “libertarianism” of the far right; but anarchism, as prefigured in early Taoist thought, and expounded by Shelley and Kropotkin, Goldman and Goodman. Anarchism’s principal target is the authoritarian State (capitalist or socialist); its principal moral-practical theme is cooperation (solidarity, mutual aid). It is the most idealistic, and to me the most interesting, of all political theories.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters

“Shelley was kicked out of Oxford—I think the story is unauthenticated, but who cares—because he painted a sign on the end wall of a dead-end alley: THIS WAY TO HEAVEN. I feel that every now and then his sign needs repainting.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters

“Zaman zaman, çocuğu görmeye giden ergen kızlar ve oğlanlardan biri ağlayarak veya hiddetle dönmez evine. Daha doğrusu, evine dönmez. Kimi zaman daha yaşlı bir adam ya da kadın bir-iki gün susar kalır, sonra evini terk eder. Bu insanlar sokağa çıkar, sokakta bir başlarına yürürler... Her biri, tek başlarına batıya veya kuzeye doğru, dağlara doğru giderler. Yollarına devam ederler. Omelas’ı bırakır, karanlığın içine doğru yürürler ve geri gelmezler. Gittikleri yer çoğunuz için mutluluk kentinden bile daha zor tahayyül edilebilir bir yerdir. Onu hiç betimleyemem. Belki de yoktur. Ama nereye gittiklerini biliyor gibiler Omelas’ı bırakıp gidenler.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters

“To weave some harmony among them, at least. Life loves to know itself, out to its furthest limits; to embrace complexity is its delight. Our difference is our beauty. All these worlds and the various forms and ways of the minds and lives and bodies on them—together they would make a splendid harmony.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters

“And I find made-up pronouns, “te” and “heshe” and so on, dreary and annoying.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters

“Many feminists have been grieved or aggrieved by The Left Hand of Darkness because the androgynes in it are called “he” throughout. In the third person singular, the English generic pronoun is the same as the masculine pronoun. A fact worth reflecting upon.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters

“Or if the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which Messrs. Fourier’s and Bellamy’s and Morris’s utopias should all be outdone, and millions kept permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torment, what except a specifical and independent sort of emotion can it be which would make us immediately feel, even though an impulse arose within us to clutch at the happiness so offered, how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment when deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain?”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters

“El ocio es un estado natural y bendito".”
― Ursual K. LeGuin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters

“This story is about one of the ones who walked away from Omelas.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters

“Alvaro Guillen Martin,” said Martin, formal, bowing slightly. Another girl was out, the same beautiful face; Martin stared at her and his eye rolled like a nervous pony’s. Evidently he had never given any thought to cloning and was suffering technological shock. “Steady,” Pugh said in the Argentine dialect, “it’s only excess twins.” He stood close by Martin’s elbow. He was glad himself of the contact.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters

“Many feminists have been grieved or aggrieved by The Left Hand of Darkness because the androgynes in it are called “he” throughout. In the third person singular, the English generic pronoun is the same as the masculine pronoun. A fact worth reflecting upon. And it’s a trap, with no way out, because the exclusion of the feminine (she) and the neuter (it) from the generic/masculine (he) makes the use of either of them more specific, more unjust, as it were, than the use of “he.” And I find made-up pronouns, “te” and “heshe” and so on, dreary and annoying.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters

“It is hard to meet a stranger. Even the greatest extravert meeting even the meekest stranger knows a certain dread, though he may not know he knows it. Will he make a fool of me wreck my image of myself invade me destroy me change me? Will he be different from me? Yes, that he will. There’s the terrible thing: the strangeness of the stranger. After two years on a dead planet, and the last half year isolated as a team of two, oneself and one other, after that it’s even harder to meet a stranger, however”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters

“As Jean-Paul Sartre has said in his lovable way, ‘Hell is other people.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters

“Shelley was kicked out of Oxford- I think the story is unauthenticated, but who cares- because he painted a sign on the end wall of a dead-end alley: THIS WAY TO HEAVEN. I feel that every now and then his sign needs repainting.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters

“But it’s not an anti-drug story either. My only strong opinion about drugs (pot, hallucinogens, alcohol) is anti-prohibition and pro-education. I have to admit that people who expand their consciousness by living instead of by taking chemicals usually come back with much more interesting reports of where they’ve been. But I’m an addict myself (tobacco), and it would be plain silly in me to celebrate or to condemn anybody else for a similar dependence.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters