Sara

“From that time forth he believed that the wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later years he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

“Those of you who have read my tale up till now must be wondering who is this witch devoid of hatred, who is mislead each time by the wickedness in men’s hearts? For the nth time I made up my mind to be different and fight it out tooth and nail. But how to work a change in my hear and coat its lining with snake venom? How to make it into a vessel for bitter and violent feelings? To get it to love evil? Instead I could only feel tenderness and compassion for the disinherited and a sense of revolt against injustice.”
― Maryse Condé, I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem

“As a boy, Ogion like all boys had thought it would be a very pleasant game to take by art-magic whatever shape one liked, man or beast, tree or cloud, and so to play at a thousand beings. But as a wizard he had learned the price of the game, which is the peril of losing one's self, playing away the truth. The longer a man stays in a form not his own, the greater this peril. Every prentice-sorcerer learns the tale of the wizard Bordger of Way, who delighted in taking bear's shape, and did so more and more often until the bear grew in him and the man died away, and he became a bear, and killed his own little son in the forests, and was hunted down and slain. And no one knows how many of the dolphins that leap in the waters of the Inmost Sea were men once, wise men, who forgot their wisdom and their name in the joy of the restless sea.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

“Illusion fools the beholder's senses; it makes him see and hear and feel that the thing is changed. But it does not change the thing. To change this rock into a jewel, you must change its true name. And to do that, my son, even to so small a scrap of the world, is to change the world. It can be done. Indeed it can be done. It is the art of the Master Changer, and you will learn it, when you are ready to learn it. But you must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A wizard's power of Changing and of Summoning can shake the balance of the world. It is danger-ous, that power. It is most perilous. It must follow knowledge, and serve need. To light a candle is to cast a shadow ...”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea