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It's a rare gift, to know where you need to be, before you've been to all the places you don't need to be.

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The best I can say, it's like this. A man's in his skin, see, like a nut in its shell ... It's hard and strong, that shell, and it's all full of him. ...more

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If women had power what would men be but women who can't bear children? And what would women be but men who can?

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Shevek saw that he had touched in these men an impersonal animosity that went very deep. Apparently they, like the tables on the ship, contained a wom...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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She could not have been born gray. Hercolor, her color of brown, was an essential part of her, not an accident. Her anger, timidity, brashness, gentle...more

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Of course there is no veneer, the process is one of growth, and primitiveness and civilization are degrees of the same thing. If civilization has an o...more

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It is yin and yang. Light is the left hand of darkness... how did it go? Light, dark. Fear, courage. Cold, warmth. Female, male. It is yourself, There...more

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Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the ch...more

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Making female noises, shrieking and squeaking and being shrill, all those things that annoy people with longer vocal cords. Another case where the len...more

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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...more

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In diversity is life and where there's life there's hope, was the general sum of his creed, a modest one to be sure.

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As we did without clergy, let us do without soldiers. The joy built upon successful slaughter is not the right kind of joy; it will not do; it is fear...more

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If women had power, what would men be but women who can't bear children? And what would women be but men who can?...I mean, men give her [a queen] pow...more

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Science Fiction properly conceived, like all serious fiction, however funny, is a way of trying to describe what is going on, what people actually do ...more