Suffering is the condition on which we live. And when it comes you know it. You know it as the truth. Of course it's right to cure diseases, to preve… - Ursula K. Le Guin

We can't prevent suffering. This pain and that pain, yes, but not Pain.

He had almost yielded, but not quite. He had not consented. It is very hard for evil to take hold of the unconsenting soul.

Because there is nothing, nothing on Urras that we Anarresti need! We left with empty hands, a hundred and seventy years ago, and we were right. We took nothing. Because there is nothing here but States and their weapons, the rich and their lies, and the poor and their misery. There is no way to act rightly, with a clear heart, on Urras. There is nothing you can do that profit does not enter into, and fear of loss, and the wish for power. You cannot say good morning without knowing which of you is ‘superior’ to the other, or trying to prove it. You cannot act like a brother to other people, you must manipulate them, or command them, or obey them, or trick them. You cannot touch another person, yet they will not leave you alone. There is no freedom. It is a box — Urras is a box, a package, with all the beautiful wrapping of blue sky and meadows and forests and great cities. And you open the box, and what is inside it? A black cellar full of dust, and a dead man. A man whose hand was shot off because he held it out to others.

When I'm writing I don't dream much; it's like the dreaming gets used in the writing.