Literacy is so you can read the operating instructions.

Writing makes no noise, except groans, and it can be done everywhere, and it is done alone.

There is a limited number of plots. There is no limit to the number of stories.

In general she had found that the main drawback in being a man was that conversations were less interesting.

The light is the left hand of darkness.

He knew now, and the knowledge was hard, that his task had never been to undo what he had done, but to finish what he had begun.

Reading is performance. The reader--the child under the blanket with a flashlight, the woman at the kitchen table, the man at the library desk--performs the work. The performance is silent. The readers hear the sounds of the words and the beat of the sentences only in their inner ear. Silent drummers on noiseless drums. An amazing performance in an amazing theater.