The Left Hand of Darkness

by Ursula K. Le Guin

Terrans tend to feel they’ve got to get ahead, make progress. The people of Winter, who always live in the Year One, feel that progress is less important than presence.

“To exhibit the perfect uselessness of knowing the answer to the wrong question.”

The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.”

I write to be writing in my own language, perhaps.

To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.

Hate Orgoreyn? No, how should I? How does one hate a country, or love one? Tibe talks about it; I lack the trick of it. I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one’s country; is it hate of one’s uncountry? Then it’s not a good thing. Is it simply self-love? That’s a good thing, but one mustn’t make a virtue of it, or a profession....