#otak in the far distant history of tales of earthsea: what is freedom if we are not all free?

[wingedbreath]

some of my favorite earthsea quotes:

• “The dance is always danced above the hollow place, above the terrible abyss.”

• “I think there’s an evil in us, in humankind. Trust denies it. Leaps across it. Leaps the chasm.”

• “Only one thing in the world can resist an evil-hearted man. And that is another man. In our shame is our glory. Only our spirit, which is capable of evil, is capable of overcoming it.”

• “Endurance may outlast hope.”

• “If all but us are slaves, what’s our freedom worth?”

• “You have set us both free. Alone, no one wins freedom.”

• “Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one.”

• “The world’s vast and strange, Hara, but no vaster and no stranger than our minds are.”

and the more spoiler-y passages under the cut:

• “Ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had made himself whole: a man: who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life’s sake and never in the service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark.”

• “When I die, I can breathe back the breath that made me live. I can give back to the world all that I didn’t do. All that I might have been and couldn’t be. All the choices I didn’t make. All the things I lost and spent and wasted. I can give them back to the world. To the lives that haven’t been lived yet. That will be my gift back to the world that gave me the life I did live, the love I loved, the breath I breathed.”

#oh my beloved fantasy novel series #i just wanted to share one quote but then i kept going through my notes and finding more!!! #it’s fun to compile different ones to find patterns like omg these are from all over the series #otak in the far distant history of tales of earthsea: what is freedom if we are not all free? #ged to tenar years later in the tombs of atuan: in freeing you (and you freeing me) we have both become free #me when the themes are themeing… #earthsea #stfu ellie