A. J’s Reviews > Tehanu > Status Update

They held each other so fiercely, so dearly, that they stopped knowing anything but each other.

“I wanted to day - but there was no use- but couldn’t it be that there’s a woman on Gont, I don’t know who, I have no idea, but it could be that there is, or will be, or may be, a woman, and that they seek- they need- her. Is it impossible?”
He listened. He was not deaf. And he said only, under his breath, “It may be.”

“…and she, brought up as a solitary, untouched priestess, a holy thing, had not sought touch, or had not known she sought it.”

“And when I came here, I thought I’d come out into the light. I learned the true words. I lived well. In the broad daylight.”

A woman's a different thing entirely. Who knows where a woman begins and ends? Listen mistress, I have roots, I have roots deeper than this island. Deeper than the sea, older than the raising of the lands. I go back into the dark ... I go back into the dark!

I adore Le Guin’s writing. It’s so simple yet so potent.