“What is government? From the outside it looks like a security system based on the marriage of land and people, From the inside, it looks like and attempts to create a community. A government is like an oyster, hard on the outside and soft on the inside, and the outside and inside are utterly dependent on each other.”

“The mind self-edits. The mind airbrushes. It's a different thing to be inside a body than outside. From outside, you can look, inspect, compare. From inside there is no comparison.”

“Boasting, like gilded armour, is very different inside from outside.”

“To me style is just the outside of content, and content the inside of style, like the outside and the inside of the human body—both go together, they can’t be separated.”

“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”

“Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.”

“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.”

“The ultimate truth… If an egg is broken by an outside force, a life ends. If broken by an inside force, a life begins. You will find all the treasures of life, all the secrets of life inside you. Stop looking outside. Break the egg from inside, let life begin.”

“Identification is created both from the inside and the outside, in the encounter between one’s own presentation of self and the perceptions of others.”

“Things outside you are projections of what's inside you, and what's inside you is a projection of what's outside. So when you step into the labyrinth outside you, at the same time you're stepping into the labyrinth inside.”