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Tehanu (Earthsea Cycle, #4) QUOTES

Tehanu (Earthsea Cycle, #4) QUOTES

1 " 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. Full of grand man-meat, man-self. And that's all. That's all there is.

A woman's a different thing entirely. Who knows where a woman begins and ends? Listen mistress, I have roots, I have roots deeper than this island. Deeper than the sea, older than the raising of the lands. I go back into the dark ... I go back into the dark! Before the moon I am, what a woman is, a woman of power, a woman's power, deeper than the roots of trees, deeper than the roots of islands, older than the Making, older than the moon. Who dares ask questions of the dark? Who'll ask the dark its name? "

― Ursula K. Le Guin , Tehanu (Earthsea Cycle, #4)

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

― Ursula K. Le Guin , Tehanu (Earthsea Cycle, #4)

3 " As a child in Atuan, Tenar had learned how to learn. There seemed always to be a great deal to be learned, more than she would have believed when she was a prentice-priestess or the pupil of a mage. "

― Ursula K. Le Guin , Tehanu (Earthsea Cycle, #4)

4 " You are beautiful," Tenar said in a different tone. "Listen to me, Therru. Come here. You have scars, ugly scars, because an ugly, evil thing was done to you. People see the scars. But they see you, too, and you aren't the scars. You aren't ugly. You aren't evil. You are Therru, and beautiful. You are Therru who can work, and walk, and run, and dance, beautifully, in a red dress. "

― Ursula K. Le Guin , Tehanu (Earthsea Cycle, #4)

5 " Ours is only a little power, seems like, next to theirs," Moss said. "But it goes down deep. It's all roots. It's like an old blackberry thicket. And a wizard's power's like a fir tree, maybe, great and tall and grand, but it'll blow right down in a storm. Nothing kills a blackberry bramble. "

― Ursula K. Le Guin , Tehanu (Earthsea Cycle, #4)

6 " She thought about how it was to have been a woman in the prime of life, with children and a man, and then to lose all that, becoming old and a widow, powerless. But even so she did not feel she understood his shame, his agony of humiliation. Perhaps only a man could feel so. A woman got used to shame. "

― Ursula K. Le Guin , Tehanu (Earthsea Cycle, #4)

7 " What are we so afraid of? Why don't we let 'em tell us we're afraid? What is it they're afraid of?" She picked up the stocking she had been darning, turned it in her hands, was silent awhile; finally she said, "What are they afraid of us for? "

― Ursula K. Le Guin , Tehanu (Earthsea Cycle, #4)

8 " If we hide, Therru, we feed him. We will eat. And we will starve him. Come with me. "

― Ursula K. Le Guin , Tehanu (Earthsea Cycle, #4)

9 " A man gives out, dearie. A woman takes in. "

― Ursula K. Le Guin , Tehanu (Earthsea Cycle, #4)

10 " The heavy work requiring muscle and the skilled work with crops and sheep was done by Ged, Shandy, and Tenar, while the two old men who had been there all their lives, his father's men took him about and told him how they managed it all, and truly believed they were managing it all, and shared their believe with him. "

― Ursula K. Le Guin , Tehanu (Earthsea Cycle, #4)

11 " Which of us saved the other from the Labyrinth, Ged? "

― Ursula K. Le Guin , Tehanu (Earthsea Cycle, #4)

12 " If your strength is only the other’s weakness, you live in fear, "

― Ursula K. Le Guin , Tehanu (Earthsea Cycle, #4)

13 " You seemed, in your power, as free as man can be. But at what cost? What made you free? And I... I was made, moulded like clay, by the will of the women serving the Old Powers, or serving the men who made all services and ways and places, I no longer know which. Then I went free, with you, for a moment, and with Ogion. But it was not my freedom. Only it gave me a choice; and I chose. I chose to mould myself like clay to the use of a farm and a farmer and our children. I made myself a vessel. I know its shape. But not the clay. Life danced me. I know the dances. But I don't know who the dancer is. "

― Ursula K. Le Guin , Tehanu (Earthsea Cycle, #4)

14 " But because she was not a girl now, she was not awed, but only wondered at how men ordered their world into this dance of masks, and how easily a woman might learn to dance it. "

― Ursula K. Le Guin , Tehanu (Earthsea Cycle, #4)

15 " The child stared at her or at nothing, trying to breathe, and trying again to breathe, and trying again to breathe. "

― Ursula K. Le Guin , Tehanu (Earthsea Cycle, #4)

16 " By the time I wrote this book I needed to look at heroics from outside and underneath, from the point of view of the people who are not included. The ones who can’t do magic. The ones who don’t have shining staffs or swords. Women, kids, the poor, the old, the powerless. Unheroes, ordinary people—my people. I didn’t want to change Earthsea, but I needed to see what Earthsea looked like to us. "

― Ursula K. Le Guin , Tehanu (Earthsea Cycle, #4)

17 " You are beautiful,” Tenar said in a different tone. “Listen to me, Therru. Come here. You have scars, ugly scars, because an ugly, evil thing was done to you. People see the scars. But they see you, too, and you aren’t the scars. You aren’t ugly. You aren’t evil. You are Therru, and beautiful. You are Therru who can work, and walk, and run, and dance, beautifully, in a red dress. "

― Ursula K. Le Guin , Tehanu (Earthsea Cycle, #4)

18 " He was so intense, so serious, armored in the formality of his rank and yet vulnerable in his honesty, the purity of his will. Her heart yearned to him. He thought he had learned pain, but he would learn it again and again, all his life, and forget none of it. "

― Ursula K. Le Guin , Tehanu (Earthsea Cycle, #4)

19 " She found that their company revived her, carried her away from the constant presence of last night's terror, little by little, till she could begin to look back on it as something that had happened, not something that was happening, that must always be happening to her. "

― Ursula K. Le Guin , Tehanu (Earthsea Cycle, #4)

20 " Tienes cicatrices, cicatrices feas, porque te hicieron algo feo, algo malvado. La gente ve las cicatrices. Pero también te ve a ti y tú no eres esas cicatrices. No eres fea. No eres malvada. Eres Therru y eres hermosa. Eres Therru, que puede trabajar y caminar y correr y bailar, hermosamente, con un vestido rojo. "

― Ursula K. Le Guin , Tehanu (Earthsea Cycle, #4)