“Sometimes a god comes,” Selver said. “He brings a new way to do a thing, or a new thing to be done. A new kind of singing, or a new kind of death. He brings this across the bridge between the dream-time and the world-time. When he has done this, it is done. You cannot take things that exist in the world and try to drive them back into the dream, to hold them inside the dream with walls and pretenses. That is insanity. What is, is. There is no use pretending, now, that we do not know how to kill one another.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin , Hainish Cycle

Section 8
Hainish Cycle, The Word for World Is Forest (1972)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Sometimes a god comes,” Selver said. “He brings a new way to do a thing, or a new thing to be done. A new kind of singi…" by Ursula K. Le Guin?

Ursula K. Le Guin 292

American writer 1929–2018

Related quotes

“Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

“Try to find pleasure in the speed that you're not used to. Changing the way you do routine things allows a new person to grow inside of you. But when all is said and done, you're the one who must decide how you handle it.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

“Bring us hither your sun and your summers;
And renew our world as of yore;
You shall teach us your song's new numbers,
And things that we dreamed not before:
Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers,
And a singer who sings no more.”

Arthur O'Shaughnessy Ode

Music and Moonlight (1874), Ode
Context: Great hail! we cry to the comers
From the dazzling unknown shore;
Bring us hither your sun and your summers;
And renew our world as of yore;
You shall teach us your song's new numbers,
And things that we dreamed not before:
Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers,
And a singer who sings no more.

“I dream. Sometimes I think that’s the only right thing to do. To dream, to live in the world of dreams. But it doesn’t last forever. Wakefulness always comes to take me back.”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

“Now he found out a new thing--namely, that to promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing.”

Mark Twain book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Variant: To promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing.
Source: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Ch. 22.