The Word for World is Forest (Hainish Cycle, #5)

by Ursula K. Le Guin

Let me be a while. I’m as full of forebodings as a stupid old man, I must dream. . . .”

A fine rain fell without sound on the oak-leaves and on the narrow pathways to the Lodge and the river. Only if you listened intently could you hear the rain, too multitudinous a music for one mind to grasp, a single endless chord played on the entire forest.

He was always disagreeably surprised to find how vulnerable his feelings were, how much it hurt him to be hurt.

But even the most unmissionary soul, unless he pretend he has no emotions, is sometimes faced with a choice between commission and omission. “What are they doing?” abruptly becomes, “What are we doing?” and then, “What must I do?”

You cannot take things that exist in the world and try to drive them back into the dream, to hold them inside the dream with walls and pretenses.