The Found and the Lost: The Collected Novellas of Ursula K. Le Guin

by Ursula K. Le Guin

I think that it behooves men to learn to speak the language of the country we live in, not using us to speak for them.

‘To know there is a choice is to have to make the choice: change or stay: river or rock.’

When one does not read and has not had one’s mind filled up by the images on the nets, words spoken strike down deep in the mind.

If Rayaye’s men had tortured him and Rayaye pretended ignorance of the fact, Esdan had nothing to gain by insisting on it.

I think there’s an evil in us, in humankind. Trust denies it. Leaps across it. Leaps the chasm. But it’s there. And everything we do finally serves evil, because that’s what we are. Greed and cruelty. I look at the world, at the forests and the mountain here, the sky, and it’s all right, as it should be. But we aren’t. People aren’t. We’re wrong. We do wrong. No animal does wrong. How could they? But we can, and we do. And we never stop.”