Very Far Away from Anywhere Else Quotes

“The trouble is, women have to be absolutely first class to get where third-class men get.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Very Far Away from Anywhere Else: An Inspiring YA Coming-of-Age Story About Smart Teens and Honest Living

“I think what you mostly do when you find you really are alone is to panic. You rush to the opposite extreme and pack yourself into groups - clubs, teams, societies, types. You suddenly start dressing exactly like the others. It's a way of being invisible. The way you sew the patches on the holes in your blue jeans becomes incredibly important. If you do it wrong you're not with it. That's a peculiar phrase, you know? With it. With what? With them. With the others. All together. Safety in numbers. I'm not me. I'm a basketball letter. I'm a popular kid. I'm my friend's friend. I'm a black leather growth on a Honda. I'm a member. I'm a teenager. You can't see me, all you can see is us. We're safe. And if We see You standing alone by yourself, if you're lucky we'll ignore you. If you're not lucky, we might throw rocks. Because we don't like people standing there with the wrong kind of patches on their jeans reminding us that we're each alone and none of us is safe.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Very Far Away from Anywhere Else

“Maybe when you meet the people you are supposed to meet you know it, without knowing it.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Very Far Away from Anywhere Else

“We didn't talk about problems, or parents, or automobiles, or ambitions. We talked about life....And the sea was there, forty feet away and getting closer, and the sky over the sea, and the sun going down the sky. And it was cold, and it was the high point of my life.
I'd had high points before.
Once at night walking in the park in the rain in autumn.
Once out in the desert, under the stars, when I turned into the earth turning on its axis. Sometimes thinking, just thinking things through.
But always alone. By myself.
This time I was not alone.
I was on the high mountain with a friend. There is nothing, there is nothing that beats that. If it never happens again in my life, still I can say I was there once.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Very Far Away from Anywhere Else

“And I needed a rock. Something to hold onto, to stand on. Something solid. Because everything was going soft, turning into mush, into marsh, into fog. Fog closing in on all sides. I didn't know where I was at all.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Very Far Away from Anywhere Else

“It had never occurred to me before that music and thinking are so much alike. In fact you could say music is another way of thinking, or maybe thinking is another kind of music.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Very Far Away from Anywhere Else

“She said it seemed like the only choices offered were to want to be what other people were, or to be what other people wanted you to be.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Very Far Away from Anywhere Else

“The question was where to start. Where to build up a solid foundation of knowledge on which you could balance ideas. It wasn’t exactly a modest ambition. But what I had learned from Natalie was that you could have a very immodest ambition if you went after it methodically.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Very Far Away from Anywhere Else: An Inspiring YA Coming-of-Age Story About Smart Teens and Honest Living

“The really terrible thing about being young is the triviality”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Very Far Away from Anywhere Else

“Artık şatonun efendisi rolünü oynamak istemiyorum. Öteki insanlarla yaşamak istiyorum Nat. Başkalarının hiç önemi yok diye düşünüyordum eskiden ama var. Her şeyi tek başına başaramaz insan.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Very Far Away from Anywhere Else

“Ne yapacağımı bilmiyorum," dedim. "Daha yıllarca yaşamam gerekiyor, bunu nasıl becereceğimi bilmiyorum.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Very Far Away from Anywhere Else

“Sorunlardan, anne babalarımızdan, otomobillerden veya tutkulardan söz etmedik. Yaşam üzerine konuştuk. Yaşamın anlamı nedir diye sorular sormanın bir yararı olmadığına karar verdik, çünkü yaşam bir yanıt değil, bir sorudur, bunun yanıtını sadece siz bulabilirsiniz. Deniz yanı başımıza, on metre berimize gelmişti, giderek yaklaşıyordu. Gökyüzü denizin üstünü örtmüş, güneş batmak üzereydi. Hava soğumuştu, bense yaşamımın en güzel anlarını yaşıyordum. Daha önce de böyle güzel anlar yaşamıştım. Bir keresinde güz vakti gece parkta yağmur altında yürümüştüm. Bir kez çöl ortasında, yıldızlar altında dolaşmış, sonra ekseni üzerinde dönen yeryuvarına geri dönmüştüm. Kimileyin düşünürken başıma gelirdi bu, dalar giderdim düşüncelerin içine. Ama hep yalnız, kendi başıma iken. Bu kez yalnız değildim. Yüce dağ başında bir arkadaş vardı yanımda. Bundan daha güzel hiçbir şey olamaz ama hiçbir şey. Bir daha böyle bir şey yaşamasam da fark etmez, ben yaşayacağımı yaşadım derim kendime.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Very Far Away from Anywhere Else

“Some kids really don’t have much Me at all. They truly are part of the group. But a lot of them just act—pretend—the way I tried to. Their heart isn’t really in the groups, but still they get along, they get by. I wish I could. I honestly wish I could be a good hypocrite. It doesn’t hurt anybody, and it sure makes life easier. But I never could fool anybody. They knew I wasn’t interested in what interested them, and they despised me for it, and I despised them for despising me. But then I also despised the few kids who didn’t try to go along.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Very Far Away from Anywhere Else

“Değer mi değmez mi bilmem ama değdiği yere kadar," demişti.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Very Far Away from Anywhere Else

“İkiyüzlü biri olabilmeyi gerçekten çok isterdim. Kimseye zararı yok, hayatı biraz kolaylaştıracağı kesin. Ne var ki, ben hiç kimseyi kandıramadım.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Very Far Away from Anywhere Else

“Ömrümce görmezsem de bir daha,
Eh diyebilirim yine de,
Bir kez orada bulundum.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Very Far Away from Anywhere Else