Five Ways to Forgiveness (Hainish Cycle, #7)

by Ursula K. Le Guin

and he knew that the right use of knowledge is fulfillment.

The first thing I did freely, as a free woman, was to shut my door.

So I began to read freely, to read any book I wanted in that great library, every book in it if I could. That was my joy, that reading. That was the heart of my freedom.

Liberty 18. Of the events that led to this, and what has followed, you may read in the new three-volume History of Yeowe from the University Press. I have told the story I was asked to tell. I have closed it, as so many stories close, with a joining of two people. What is one man’s and one woman’s love and desire, against the history of two worlds, the great revolutions of our lifetimes, the hope, the unending cruelty of our species? A little thing. But a key is a little thing, next to the door it opens. If you lose the key, the door may never be unlocked.

It is in our bodies that we lose or begin our freedom, in our bodies that we accept or end our slavery.