What is a woman's power then?" she asked. "I don't think we know." "When has a woman power because she's a woman? With her children, I suppose. For a while..." "In her house, maybe." She looked around the kitchen. "But the doors are shut," she said, "the doors are locked." "Because you're valuable." "Oh yes. We're precious. So long as we're powerless.

Take the tale in your teeth, then, and bite till the blood runs, hoping it's not poison.

They can send death at once, but life is slower.

If it were proven that there is no God there would be no religion. ...But also if it were proven that there is a God, there would be no religion.

The fish in the creek said nothing. Fish never do. Few people know what fish think about injustice, or anything else.

The borderline between prose and poetry is one of those fog-shrouded literary minefields where the wary explorer gets blown to bits before ever seeing anything clearly. It is full of barbed wire and the stumps of dead opinions.

After a long time spent learning how to write as a woman instead of as an honorary man, I was able to come back to Earthsea and write the next three books in another and newer tradition: that of questioning, rather than accepting, the gendering of power as male.