“I wanted to create an interesting scifi universe that didn’t violate the laws of physics, and that means that you’re limited to staying inside the solar system. I also wanted to get away from the ship-centric style of science fiction. Star Trek is ship-centric and it’s all about the Enterprise — there are many other examples. What if we decided to get away from the obsession with ships and instead thought about big machines and structures that might be used to create a civilization inside the solar system?”

“I am prepared. The more pressure there is, the stronger I am. In Portugal, we say the bigger the ship, the stronger the storm. Fortunately for me, I have always been in big ships. FC Porto was a very big ship in Portugal, Chelsea was also a big ship in England and Inter was a great ship in Italy. Now I'm at Real Madrid, which is considered the biggest ship on the planet.”

“I have read a lot about it and I watched it and Liberty University, like a rocket ship, a really great rocket ship.”

“It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.”

“Like all walls it was ambiguous, two-faced. What was inside it and what was outside it depended upon which side of it you were on. Looked at from one side, the wall enclosed a barren sixty-acre field called the Port of Anarres. […] It was in fact a quarantine. The wall shut in not only the landing field but also the ships that came down out of space, and the men that came on the ships, and the worlds they came from, and the rest of the universe. It enclosed the universe, leaving Anarres outside, free. Looked at from the other side, the wall enclosed Anarres: the whole planet was inside it, a great prison camp, cut off from other worlds and other men, in quarantine.”

“Happiness is not about getting what we want from the universe, but about how we can gratefully accept what the universe has given us.”

“So many people are waiting for their happiness to come. It's not here yet, but they are waiting. It's like standing in a line waiting for your bus. One day, people say, my ship will come. One day, I'll make it. One day, I'll be happy. Ships come and go, and they wait for theirs. They think about jumping on other people's ships. They think everything. Yet, incredibly enough, there has always been someone who has pointed out the simple fact that what we are looking for is inside.”

“We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom. Where a beam is taken away a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of the ship is used as support. In this way, by using the old beams and driftwood the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradual reconstruction.”

“She couldn’t get any farther away inside from her skin. She couldn’t get away.”

“… It makes me cry, I want to talk about something I am not sure I can talk about, I want to talk about the inside from the inside, I do not want to leave it
I am so happy in the silky damp dark of the labyrinth and there is no thread”