Status Updates From Five Ways to Forgiveness (L...

Ursula K Le Guin has this constant theme of people across space, aliens to each other, coming together in the face of adversity and persevering through their commitment to care for this strange person across from them despite their differences in culture, biology, and ideology omg I love it

“He was ashamed of his anger, his grief, himself. He wanted to tell her that she had been a help and hope to him too, that he honored her, that she was brave beyond belief; but none of the words would come. He felt empty, worn-out. He felt old” (98)

“When she contradicted Lord Gatuyo in a discussion, he stared with blank disbelief of a man who has been talked back to by his shoe. He had been thinking of her as a woman. But in general the disgenderment worked, allowing her to work with them; and she began to fit herself into the game… But she felt indexed by these men who could not accept her for what she was. She needed to talk to a woman.” (46)

“The Aliens had poor night vision, she had heard. They had little eyes, little dots with white all round them, like a scared calf. She didn’t like their eyes, though she liked the colors of their skin, mostly dark brown or ruddy brown, warmer than her greyish-brown slave skin of the blue-black hide Abberkambhad got from the owner who had raped his mother. Cyanid skins, the Aliens had said politely” (23)

“The night was intensely silent. When she first came out her from the city the silence had wakened her, night after night” (20)

“A chief could indulge himself sexually, misuse power, grow rich off his people and be admired for it, but a chief who betrayed a companion was not forgiven. It was, Yoss thought, the code of the slave.”(13)

“Her daughter Safnan had given her Tikuli, a tiny red cub, a scurry of paws and plume-tail—how long ago? Eight years. A long time. A lifetime for a foxdog.
More than a lifetime for Safnan. More than a lifetime for her children, Yoss’s grandchildren, Enkamma and Uye.
If I am alive, they are dead, Yoss thought, as she always thought; if they are alive, I am dead” (11)