The Other Wind (Earthsea Cycle, #6)

by Ursula K. Le Guin

“There’s no less or greater in an absolute thing,” Sparrowhawk said. “All or nothing at all, the true lover says, and that’s the truth of it. My love will never die, he says. He claims eternity. And rightly. How can it die when it’s life itself? What do we know of eternity but the glimpse we get of it when we enter in that bond?”

“So maybe the difference isn’t language. Maybe it’s this: animals do neither good nor evil. They do as they must do. We may call what they do harmful or useful, but good and evil belong to us, who chose to choose what we do.

“Well,” Alder said, sitting down on the bed. He was not in the habit of talking to the kitten. Their relationship was one of silent, trustful touch. But he had to talk to somebody. “I met the king today,” he said.

The conversation with the child had reminded him that the sons of lords were children, that lords were men, and that it was not men he need fear.

Indeed he did not know what weighed more heavily after all, the great strange things or the small common ones.

he had spent his life learning how to choose to do what he had no choice but to do.”