Hanging, swaying, pulsing, the most vulnerable and insubstantial creature, it has for its defense the violence and power of the whole ocean, to which it has entrusted its being, its going, and its will.
“You told me to show you something worth seeing. I show you yourself.”
Omelas already exists: no need to build it or choose it. We already live here –in the narrow, foul, dark prison we let our ignorance, fear, and hatred build for us and keep us in, here in the splendid, beautiful city of life...
The sun itself was hidden, but there was a glitter on the horizon, almost like the dazzle of the crystal walls of the Undertomb, a kind of joyous shimmering off on the edge of the world.
“What is that?” the girl said, and he: “The sea.”
I look at the world, at the forests and the mountains here, the sky, and it's all right, as it should be. But we aren't. People aren't. We're wrong. We do wrong. No animal does wrong. How could they? But we can, and we do. And we never stop.
But you must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act.
And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful the earth is, is to see it as the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death.
I know perfectly well he's a god, too. But what I think is, he'll be much godlier after he's dead.
He grinned a little as he thought it; for he had always liked that pause, that fearful pause, the moment before things changed.