Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985)

Whelks are strange and comforting.
They have no notion of community life and they breed very quietly.
But they have a strong sense of personal dignity.
Even lying face down in a tray of vinegar, there is something noble about a whelk.
Which cannot be said for everybody.

Uncertainty to me was like Aardvaark to other people. A curious think I had no notion of, but recognized through secondhand illustration.

I have a theory that every time you make an important choice, the part of you left behind continues the other life you could have had.

The priest has a book with the words set out. Old words, known words, words of power. Words that are always on the surface. Words for every occasion. The words work. They do what they're supposed to do; comfort and discipline. The prophet has no book. The prophet is a voice that cries in the wilderness, full of sounds that do not always set into meaning. The prophets cry out because they are troubled by demons.

In those days, magic was very important, and territory, to start with, just an extension of the chalk circle you drew around yourself to protect yourself from elementals and the like. It's gone out of fashion now, which is a shame, because sitting in a chalk circle . . . is a lot better than sitting in the gas oven. Of course people will laugh at you, but people laugh at a great many things, so there's no need to take it personally. Why will it work? It works because the principle of personal space is always the same, whether you're fending off an elemental or someone's bad mood. . . .

The training of wizards is a very difficult thing. Wizards have to spend years standing in a chalk circle until they can manage without it. They push out their power bit by bit, first within their hearts, then within their bodies, then within their immediate circle. It is not possible to control the outside of yourself until you have mastered your breathing space, it is not possible to change anything until you understand the substance you wish to change. Of course people mutilate and modify, but these are fallen powers, and to change something you do not understand is the true nature of evil.

Walls protect and walls limit. It is in the nature of walls that they should fall. That walls should fall is the consequence of blowing your own trumpet.

Families, real ones, are chairs and tables and the right number of cups; but I had no means of joining one, and no means of dismissing my own; she had tied a thread around my button, to tug when she pleased.