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Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes - Page 13

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Infinite are the arguments of mages.

Infinite are the arguments of mages.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Argument, Infinite
Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “The Farthest Shore”, p.45, Simon and Schuster

Fire and fear, good servants, bad lords.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Fear, Fire, Lord
Ursula K. Le Guin (2000). “The Left Hand of Darkness”, p.157, Penguin

Almost everything is double like that for adolescents; their lies are true and their truths are lies, and their hearts are broken by the world. They gyre and fall; they see through everything, and are blind.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Lying, Fall, Heart
Ursula K. Le Guin, Todd Barton, Margaret Chodos-Irvine, George Hersh (1985). “Always Coming Home”, p.184, Univ of California Press

What you love, you will love. What you undertake you will complete. You are a fulfiller of hope; you are to be relied on. But seventeen years give little armor against despair...Consider, Arren. To refuse death is to refuse life.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Life, Love You, Years
Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “The Farthest Shore”, p.111, Simon and Schuster

Literacy is so you can read the operating instructions.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Literacy, Instruction
Ursula K. Le Guin (2004). “The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination”, p.165, Shambhala Publications

Honestly, orthodoxy concerns me about as much as it concerns your average jackrabbit. I only follow rules that take me where I want to go. If there aren't any rules, I make up my own and follow them strictly.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Average, Want, Orthodoxy
"Ursula K. Le Guin talks to Michael Cunningham about genres, gender, and broadening fiction". Interview with Michael Cunningham, electricliterature.com. April 1, 2016.

Revolution is our obligation: our hope of evolution.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Revolution, Evolution, Obligation
Ursula K. LeGuin (2015). “The Dispossessed”, p.154, Hachette UK

A scientist can pretend that his work isn't himself, it's merely the impersonal truth. An artist can't hide behind the truth. He can't hide anywhere.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Artist, Scientist, Behinds
"The Dispossessed". Book by Ursula K. Le Guin, 1974.

O foolish writer. Now moves. Even in storytime, dreamtime, once-upon-a-time, now isn't then.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Time, Moving, Foolish
Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “Tales from Earthsea”, p.9, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

When in the Land of Property think like a propertarian. Dress like one, eat like one, act like one, be one.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Thinking, Land, Dresses
Ursula K. LeGuin (2015). “The Dispossessed”, p.93, Hachette UK

If you're a fiction writer, though, I can tell you how to let people talk through you. Listen. Just be quiet, and listen. Let the character talk. Don't censor, don't control. Listen, and write.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Writing, Character, People
Ursula K. Le Guin (2015). “Steering the Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story”, p.100, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The word must be heard in silence; there must be darkness to see the stars.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Stars, Silence, Darkness
Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “The Farthest Shore”, p.110, Simon and Schuster

Alone, no one wins freedom.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Freedom, Winning, Groups
Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “The Tombs of Atuan”, p.140, Simon and Schuster

Growing up during World War II certainly affected my whole view of life, but I hardly know how, it goes so deep. What's hard to explain now is that, though we were never invaded, and bombed only once and ineffectively on the coast of Oregon, everybody in the country was in that war. Everything we did was influenced by it - eating, traveling, dressing, thinking - everything in daily life.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Country, Growing Up, War
Source: www.guernicamag.com

If they come prying they can leave curious.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Curious, Ifs
Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “Tehanu”, p.98, Simon and Schuster

No man, no power, can bind the action of wizardry or still the words of power. For they are the very words of Making, and one who could silence them could unmake the world.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Inspirational, Life, Men
Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “The Farthest Shore”, p.23, Simon and Schuster

She obeys me, but only because she wants to. It's the only justification for obedience, Ged observed.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Ged, Want, Clarity
Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “Tehanu”, p.224, Simon and Schuster

Public speaking is done in the public tongue, the national or tribal language; and the language of our tribe is the men's language. Of course women learn it. We're not dumb. If you can tell Margaret Thatcher from Ronald Reagan, or Indira Gandhi from General Somoza, by anything they say, tell me how. This is a man's world, so it talks a man's language.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Communication, Men, Dumb
A Left-Handed Commencement Address, delivered 22 May 1983, Mills College, Oakland, California

Her work, I really think her work is finding what her real work is and doing it, her work, her own work, her being human, her being in the world.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Real, Healing, Thinking
Ursula K. Le Guin (2004). “The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination”, p.292, Shambhala Publications

All or nothing at all, the true lover says, and that's the truth of it. My love will never die, he says. He claims eternity. And rightly. How can it die when it's life itself? What do we know of eternity but the glimpse we get of it when we enter in that bond?

Ursula K. Le Guin
Life, Glimpse, Lovers
Ursula K. LeGuin (2015). “The Other Wind: The Sixth Book of Earthsea”, p.20, Hachette UK

The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Beautiful, Dark, Earth
Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “The Tombs of Atuan”, p.128, Simon and Schuster

The greatest religious problem today is how to be both a mystic and a militant; in other words how to combine the search for an expansion of inner awareness with effective social action, and how to feel one's true identity in both.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Religious, Peace, Ubuntu

A man who doesn't detest a bad government is a fool. And if there were such a thing as a good government on earth, it would be a great joy to serve it.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Men, Joy, Fool
Ursula K. Le Guin (2000). “The Left Hand of Darkness”, p.146, Penguin

Where there's property, there's theft.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Stealing, Theft, Property

Sometimes you must go against the wheel's turn.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Wheels, Sometimes, Turns
Ursula K. Le Guin (2000). “The Left Hand of Darkness”, p.188, Penguin

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