Ursula K. Le Guin

George Orr discovers that his dreams possess the remarkable ability to change the world, and when he falls into the hands of a power-mad psychiatrist, he counters by dreaming up a perfect world that can overcome his nightmares. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

A Novel

The Lathe of Heaven

I haven't any strength, I haven't any character, I'm a born tool. I haven't any destiny. All I have is dreams. And now other people run them.

Why had this gift been given to a fool, a passive nothing of a man? Why was Orr so sure and so right, while the strong, active, positive man was powerless, forced to try to use, even to obey, the weak tool?

“…Life — evolution — the whole universe of space/time, matter/energy — existence itself— is essentially change."

“That is one aspect of it," Orr said. "The other is sillness." 

“When things don't change any longer, that’s the end resut of entropy, the heat-death of the universe. The more things go on moving, interrelating, conflicting, changing, the less balance there is — and the more life.”

That is, I'm a part of it. Not separate from it. I walk on the ground and the ground's walked on by me, I breathe the air and change it, I am entirely interconnected with the world.

He would have preferred less of a mess himself, but it wasn't up to him. And at least it had her in it. He had sought her as best he could, had not found her, and had turned to his work for solace; it had not given much, but it was the work he was fit to do, and he was a patient man. But now his dry and silent grieving for his lost wife must end, for there she stood, the fierce, recalcitrant, and fragile stranger, forever to be won again.

isabella

"You can't go on changing things, trying to run things." 

"You speak as if that were some kind of general moral imperative. [...] But in fact, isn't that man's very purpose on earth— to do things, change things, run things, make a better world?"

"I don't know. Things don't have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What's the function of a galaxy? I don't know if our life has a purpose and I don't see that it matters. What does matter is that we're a part. Like a thread in a cloth or a grass-blade in a field. It is and we are. What we do is like wind blowing on the grass."

Well, after all, [the world] is on my side. That is, I'm a part of it. Not separate from it. I walk on the ground and the ground's walked on by me, I breathe the air and change it, I am entirely interconnected with the world.

taylor miles hopkins

“I don't know. Things don't have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What's the function of a galaxy? I don't know if our life has a purpose and I don't see that it matters. What does matter is that we're a part. Like a thread in a cloth or a grass-blade in a field. It is and we are. What we do is like wind blowing on the grass."

It had not been destroyed when the city was cleaned up and rebuilt…perhaps because it was so large, so useless, and so ugly as to be, to the American eye, invisible. 

Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.

The Lathe of Heaven quotes

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