I haven't any strength, I haven't any character, I'm a born tool. I haven't any destiny. All I have is dreams. And now other people run them. - Ursula K. Le Guin

“Lines and colors made with earth on earth may hold knowledge in them. All knowledge is local, all truth is partial,” Havzhiva said with an easy, colloquial dignity that he knew was an imitation of his mother, the Heir of the Sun, talking to foreign merchants. “No truth can make another truth untrue. All knowledge is a part of the whole knowledge. A true line, a true color. Once you have seen the larger pattern, you cannot go back to seeing the part as the whole."

The daily routine of most adults is so heavy and artificial that we are closed off to much of the world. We have to do this in order to get our work done. I think one purpose of art is to get us out of those routines.

When we hear music or poetry or stories, the world opens up again. We're drawn in — or out — and the windows of our perception are cleansed, as William Blake said. The same thing can happen when we're around young children or adults who have unlearned those habits of shutting the world out.

One of the historians of Darranda said: To learn a belief without belief is to sing a song without the tune. A yielding, an obedience, a willingness to accept these notes as the right notes, this pattern as the true pattern, is the essential gesture of performance, translation, and understanding. The gesture need not be permanent, a lasting posture of the mind or heart, yet it is not false. It is more than the suspension of disbelief needed to watch a play, yet less than the conversion. It is a position, a posture in the dance.