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Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes - Page 10

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If science fiction is the mythology of modern technology, then its myth is tragic.

If science fiction is the mythology of modern technology, then its myth is tragic.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Writing, Technology, Fiction
Ursula K. Le Guin (1997). “Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places”, p.169, Grove Press

We need writers who know the difference between the production of a commodity and the practice of an art.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Art, Practice, Differences
Ursula K. Le Guin (2018). “Dreams Must Explain Themselves: The Selected Non-Fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin”, p.441, Hachette UK

Dreams take short cuts.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Dream, Cutting, Short Cuts
Ursula K Le Guin (2014). “The Lathe of Heaven”, p.20, Diversion Books

This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Pain, Artist, Evil
Ursula K. Le Guin (2016). “The Unreal and the Real: The Selected Short Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin”, p.291, Simon and Schuster

If civilization has an opposite, it is war.

Ursula K. Le Guin
War, Opposites, Civilization
Ursula K. Le Guin (2000). “The Left Hand of Darkness”, p.77, Penguin

When I was young, I had to choose between the life of being and the life of doing. And I leapt at the latter like a trout to a fly. But each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act again and yet again. Then very seldom do you come upon a space, a time like this, between act and act, when you may stop and simply be. Or wonder who, after all, you are.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Space, Trout, Deeds
Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “The Farthest Shore”, p.43, Simon and Schuster

Manhood is patience. Mastery is nine time patience

Ursula K. Le Guin
Mastery, Nine, Time Patience
Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “A Wizard of Earthsea”, p.19, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

A man would know the end he goes to, but he cannot know it if he does not turn, and return to his beginning, and hold that beginning in his being. If he would not be a stick whirled and whelmed in the stream, he must be the stream itself, all of it, from its spring to its sinking in the sea.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Spring, Men, Sea
Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “A Wizard of Earthsea”, p.151, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The living tongue that tells the word, the living ear that hears it, bind and bond us in the communion we long for in the silence of our inner solitude.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Long, Silence, Solitude
Ursula K. Le Guin (2004). “The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination”, p.205, Shambhala Publications

My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world, and exiles me from it.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Inspirational, Stupid, Equality
Ursula K. Le Guin (1996). “Unlocking the Air and Other Stories”, HarperCollins Publishers

For fantasy is true, of course. It isn't factual, but it is true. Children know that. Adults know it too, and that is precisely why many of them are afraid of fantasy. They know that its truth challenges, even threatens, all that is false, all that is phony, unnecessary, and trivial in the life they have let themselves be forced into living. They are afraid of dragons, because they are afraid of freedom.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Children, Dragons, Challenges
Ursula K. Le Guin, Susan Wood (1980). “The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction”, p.44, Ultramarine Publishing

Morality is an utterly meaningless term unless defined as the good one does to others, the fulfilling of one's function in the sociopolitical whole.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Doe, Morality, Function
Ursula K. Le Guin (2008). “The Lathe Of Heaven: A Novel”, p.53, Simon and Schuster

I was in too much haste, and now have no time left. I traded all the sunlight and the cities and the distant lands for a handful of power, for a shadow, for the dark.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Dark, Land, Cities
Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “A Wizard of Earthsea”, p.198, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

There are two kinds of knowledge, local and universal.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Two, Kind, Universal
Ursula K. Le Guin (2016). “The Found and the Lost: The Collected Novellas of Ursula K. Le Guin”, p.283, Simon and Schuster

The explorer who will not come back or send back his ships to tell his tale is not an explorer, only an adventurer; and his sons are born in exile.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Travel, Son, Ships
"The Dispossessed". Book by Ursula K. Le Guin, May 1974.

If you want your writing to be taken seriously, don't marry and have kids, and above all, don't die. But if you have to die, commit suicide. They approve of that.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Suicide, Taken, Writing
"Prospects for Women in Writing" (speech), Portland, Me., Sept. 1986

Not even need and love can defeat fate.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Fate, And Love, Needs
Ursula K. Le Guin (2008). “Lavinia”, p.55, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Sure, it's simple, writing for kids... Just as simple as bringing them up.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Writing, Kids, Simple
Ursula K. Le Guin, Susan Wood (1980). “The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction”, p.54, Ultramarine Publishing

I think the mystery of art lies in this, that artists’ relationship is essentially with their work — not with power, not with profit, not with themselves, not even with their audience.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Art, Lying, Thinking

Skill in writing frees you to write what you want to write. It may also show you what you want to write. Craft enables art.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Art, Writing, Skills
Ursula K. Le Guin (2015). “Steering the Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story”, p.13, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

He had grown up in a country run by politicians who sent the pilots to man the bombers to kill the babies to make the world safer for children to grow up in.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Country, Running, Baby
The Lathe of Heaven ch. 6 (1971)

There are things that outweigh comfort, unless one is an old woman or a cat.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Cat, Comfort, Old Woman
Ursula K. Le Guin (2000). “The Left Hand of Darkness”, p.44, Penguin

There's nothing wrong with me...except acute chronic fear.

Ursula K. Le Guin

He was appalled by the examination system, when it was explained to him, he could not imagine a greater detterent to the natural wish to learn than this pattern of cramming in information and disgorging it on demand.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Wish, Demand, Examination
"The Dispossesed". Book by Ursula K. Le Guin, 1978.

They can send death at once, but life is slower.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Life Is
Ursula K. Le Guin (1967). “Three Hainish Novels”

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