One of the most striking aspects of Le Guin's speech is her ability to write in simple words that have really deep, philosophical impact. Maybe it's her background in poetry, but she has a way of writing sentences that are kind of ambiguous, yet packed with meaning.

For example, check out her closing statement:

Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing – instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there. Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon. Not from above, but from below. Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourishes, where human beings grow human souls. (69-74)

If you had to draw a picture of what she describes in that paragraph, we have a feeling it'd look like a Salvador Dalí. Or some trippy, psychedelic, black-light poster. "Orbiting spy-eyes" evokes such a different mental image than just saying "satellites", doesn't it? Her metaphors are filled with descriptive language that somehow never create a full picture no matter what you do:

In our society, women have lived, and have been despised for living, the whole side of life that includes and takes responsibility for helplessness, weakness, and illness, for the irrational and the irreparable, for all that is obscure, passive, uncontrolled, animal, unclean – the valley of the shadow, the deep, the depths of life. (56)

She's referring to what she calls "the night side" of our country, like society is the moon and we can only see the half that's illuminated by the sun. It's a beautiful way of evoking emotion from imagery, and her ambiguity allows everyone to come up with their own picture of what she's talking about.