The Dispossessed

true departure is return.

‘The Revolution is in the individual spirit, or it is nowhere. It is for all, or it is nothing. If it is seen as having any end, it will never truly begin.’ We can’t stop here. We must go on. We must take the risks.”

Those who build walls are their own prisoners.

The wall described in the opening symbolizes several of the themes of the novel. Look for other references to walls in the text. What is the meaning of this sentence: “It enclosed the universe, leaving Anarres outside, free?”

Children can be raised by all kinds of configurations of loving adults: the traditional nuclear family is not necessarily the best model for childrearing.

New ways of using language to make men and women more equal are needed.

The world had fallen out from under him, and he was left alone.

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

Nothing, no distances, no years, can be greater than the distance that’s already between us, the distance of our sex, the difference of our being, our minds; that gap, that abyss which we bridge with a look, with a touch, with a word, the easiest thing in the world. Look how far away he is, asleep. Look how far away he is, he always is. But he comes back, he comes back, he comes back…

The Day Before the Revolution.