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To have a choice at all is to be privileged.

Ursula K. Le Guin

I don’t know if our life has a purpose and I don’t see that it matters. What does matter is that we’re a part. Like a thread in a cloth or a grass-blade in a field. It is and we are. What we do is like wind blowing on the grass.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Blow Field Grass Know Like Master Part Purpose Thread
You sit down and you do it, and you do it, and you do it, until you have learned to do it.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Down Learn Sit Until
Men call women faithless, changeable, and though they say it in jealousy of their own ever-threatened sexual honor, there is some truth in it.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Call Chnagebale Ever Faithless Honor Jealous Men Sexual Some Threatened Through Truth Women
We can change our life, our being; no matter what our will is, we are changed. As the moon changes yet is one, so we are virgin, wife, mother, grandmother.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Change Grandmother Matter Moon Mother Virgin Wife
A child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of economic competition will grow up with the will to do what needs doing and the capacity for joy in doing it. It is useless work that darkens the heart.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Burson Capacity Child Competition Do Doing Economic Free Grow Guilt Joy Need Ownership Will
What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Crazy Live Person Sane World
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.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

All Before Know Need Place Rare
Things don’t have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What’s the function of a galaxy?
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Function Galaxy Machine Purpose Thing Universe Useful
Every group we belong to – by gender, sex, race, religion, age – is an in-group, surrounded by an immense out-group, living next door and all over the world, who will be alive as far into the future as humanity has a future. That out-group is called other people. It is for them that we write.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Age Future Gender Group Humanity Immense Next People Race Religion Surrounded World
I certainly wasn’t happy. Happiness has to do with reason, and only reason earns it. What I was given was the thing you can’t earn, and can’t keep, and often don’t even recognize at the time; I mean joy.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Certainty Earn Happiness Happy Keep Often Reason Thing
My tentacles are coming out of the pigeonhole in all directions.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

All Coem Direction Out Pigeonhole Tentacle
As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing a Bach suite participates, note by note, in the creation, the coming-to-be, the existence, of the music.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Bach Book Creation Note Page Participate Play Read Select Suite Word
All makers must leave room for the acts of the spirit. But they have to work hard and carefully, and wait patiently, to deserve them.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

All Carefully Deserve Leave Maker Patiently Spirit
You will die. You will not live forever. Nor will any man nor any thing. Nothing is immortal. But only to us is it given to know that we must die. And that is a great gift: the gift of selfhood. For we have only what we know we must lose, what we are willing to lose…
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Any Die Forever Given Immortal Live Man Nothing Thing
Light is the left hand of darkness and darkness the right hand of light. Two are one, life and death, lying together like lovers in kemmer, like hands joined together, like the end and the way.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Darkness Death Hand Join Left Life Light Lover Lying Right Together Two
To be oneself is a rare thing, and a great one.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Arre Great One Oneself Thing

To have a choice at all is to be privileged.

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To have a choice at all is to be privileged.

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