Quotes: Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness

  The Left Hand of Darkness is a thought-provoking science fiction novel about a planet of androgynous people. They're sexless most of the time, and it was interesting to read about a society without gender.

Quotes from The Left Hand of Darkness:

Consider: there is no division of humanity into strong and weak halves, protective/protected, dominant/submissive, owner/chattels, active/passive. In fact the whole tendency to dualism that pervades human thinking may be found to be lessened, or changed, on Winter.

They do not see one another as men or women. This is almost impossible for our imagination to accept. What is the first question we ask about a newborn baby?

A man wants his virility regarded, a woman wants her femininity appreciated, however indirect and subtle the indications of regard and appreciation. On Winter they will not exist. One is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience.

If civilization has an opposite, it is war. Of those two things, you have either one, or the other. Not both.

The unexpected is what makes life possible.

To oppose something is to maintain it.

Fire and fear, good servants, bad lords.

Light is the left hand of darkness

and darkness the right hand of light.

Two are one, life and death, lying

together like lovers in kemmer,

like hands joined together,

like the end and the way.

Praise the darkness and Creation unfinished....

***

Check also quotes from Ursula Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea.