«I am tired,» he said. «I did a lot today. That is, I did something. The only thing I have ever done. I pressed a button. It took the entire will pow… - Ursula K. Le Guin

Outside the locked room is the landscape of time, in which the spirit may, with luck and courage, construct the fragile, makeshift, improbable roads and cities of fidelity: a landscape inhabitable by human beings.

I always wondered why the makers leave housekeeping and cooking out of their tales. Isn't it what all the great wars and battles are fought for — so that at day's end a family may eat together in a peaceful house? The tale tells how the Lords of Manva hunted & gathered roots & cooked their suppers while they were camped in exile in the foothills of Sul, but it doesn't say what their wives & children were living on in their city left ruined & desolate by the enemy. They were finding food too, somehow, cleaning house & honoring the gods, the way we did in the siege & under the tyranny of the Alds. When the heroes came back from the mountain, they were welcomed with a feast. I'd like to know what the food was and how the women managed it.

You are all in jail. Each alone, solitary, with a heap of what he owns. You live in prison, die in prison. It is all I can see in your eyes – the walls, the walls!