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Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes - Page 15

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Living, being in the world, was a much greater and stranger thing than she had ever dreamed.

Living, being in the world, was a much greater and stranger thing than she had ever dreamed.

Ursula K. Le Guin
World, Stranger, Greater
Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “The Tombs of Atuan”, p.153, Simon and Schuster

A forest ecology is a delicate one. If the forest perishes, its fauna may go with it. The Athshean word for world is also the word for forest.

Ursula K. Le Guin
May, Forests, World
Ursula K. Le Guin (2010). “The Word for World is Forest”, p.86, Macmillan

Even in the obscure vast history of a planet the time it takes to make a forest counts. It takes a while. And not every planet can do it; it is no common effect, that tangling of the sun's first cool light in the shadow and complexity of innumberable wind-stirred branches.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Light, Wind, Shadow

If women had power, what would men be but women who can't bear children? And what would women be but men who can?" "Hah!" went Tenar; and presently, with some cunning, she said, "Haven't there been queens? Weren't they women of power?" "A queen's only a she-king," said Ged. She snorted. "I mean, men give her power. They let her use their power. But it isn't hers, is it? It isn't because she's a woman that she's powerful, but despite it.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Kings, Queens, Children

Prose writers are interested mostly in life and commas.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Prose
Ursula K. Le Guin (1998). “Steering the craft: exercises and discussions on story writing for the lone navigator or the mutinous crew”, The Eighth Mountain Press

After a long time spent learning how to write as a woman instead of as an honorary man, I was able to come back to Earthsea and write the next three books in another and newer tradition: that of questioning, rather than accepting, the gendering of power as male.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Book, Writing, Men

I'm not a quester or a searcher for the truth. I don't really think there is one answer, so I never went looking for it. My impulse is less questing and more playful. I like trying on ideas and ways of life and religious approaches. I'm just not a good candidate for conversion.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Religious, Thinking, Ideas

We have been civilized for a thousand millennia. We have histories of hundreds of those millennia. We have tried everything. Anarchism, in all its forms, with the rest. But I have not tried it. They say there is nothing new under any sun. But if each life is not new, each single life, then why are we born?

Ursula K. Le Guin
Single Life, Sun, Life Is
"The Dispossessed". Book by Ursula K. Le Guin, 1974.

It is hard to swear when sex is not dirty and blasphemy does not exist.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Sex, Dirty, Doe

Despair speaks evenly, in a quiet voice.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Quiet Voice, Despair, Speak
Ursula K. Le Guin (2008). “Tehanu: Book Four”, p.72, Simon and Schuster

Success is somebody else's failure. Success is the American Dream we can keep dreaming because most people in most places, including thirty million of ourselves, live wide awake in the terrible reality of poverty.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Success, Dream, Reality
A Left-Handed Commencement Address, delivered 22 May 1983, Mills College, Oakland, California

Much arrogance is necessary equipment for an artist, I think. Not sufficient, but necessary. It carries one across the gaps.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Artist, Thinking, Arrogance
Source: www.guernicamag.com

If I had to pick a hero, it would be Charles Darwin--the size of his mind, which included all that scientific curiosity and knowledge seeking, and the ability to put it all together. There is a genuine spirituality about Darwin's thinking.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Hero, Thinking, Curiosity

I don't want to be a propagandist, no matter how good the cause. I want to tell stories. It's just that the stories have to square with my consciousness as a woman and my conscience as a human being.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Squares, Stories, Want

The one thing a writer has to have is a pencil and some paper. That's enough, so long as she knows that she and she alone is in charge of that pencil, and responsible, she and she alone, for what it writes on that paper.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Writing, Long, Paper
Ursula K. Le Guin (1997). “Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places”, p.236, Grove Press

It is a terrible thing, this kindess that human beings do not lose. Terrible, because when we are finally naked in the dark and cold, it is all we have. We who are so rich, so full of strength, we end up with that small change. We have nothing else to give.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Dark, Small Changes, Giving
Ursula K. Le Guin (2000). “The Left Hand of Darkness”, p.120, Penguin

The preservation of life seems to be rather a slogan than a genuine goal of the anti-abortion forces; what they want is control. Control over behavior: power over women. Women in the anti-choice movement want to share in male power over women, and do so by denying their own womanhood, their own rights and responsibilities.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Women, Responsibility, Rights
Ursula K. Le Guin (2017). “Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places”, p.98, Grove Press

Belief in the lie is the life of the lie.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Lying, Belief
Ursula K. Le Guin (2009). “Powers”, p.294, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

To see a candle's light one must take it into a dark place.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Inspirational, Dark, Light
Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “The Farthest Shore”, p.177, Simon and Schuster

He knew now, and the knowledge was hard, that his task had never been to undo what he had done, but to finish what he had begun.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Tasks, Done, Hard
Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “A Wizard of Earthsea”, p.175, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

It was easy to share when there was enough, even barely enough, to go round. But when there was not enough? Then force entered in; might making right; power, and its tool, violence, and its most devoted ally, the averted eye.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Eye, Allies, Tools
"The Dispossessed". Book by Ursula K. Le Guin, 1974.

The borderline between prose and poetry is one of those fog-shrouded literary minefields where the wary explorer gets blown to bits before ever seeing anything clearly. It is full of barbed wire and the stumps of dead opinions.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Prose And Poetry, Fog, Wire
Ursula K. Le Guin (1997). “Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places”, p.104, Grove Press

There is neither source nor end, for all things are in the Center of Time. As all the stars may be reflected in a round raindrop falling in the night: so too do all the stars reflect the raindrop. There is neither darkness nor death, for all things are, in the Light of the Moment, and their end and their beginning are one.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Stars, Fall, Night

In so far as one denies what is, one is possessed by what is not, the compulsions, the fantasies, the terrors that flock to fill the void.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Rejection, Void, Fantasy
Ursula K. Le Guin (1973). “The lathe of heaven”

Even in merely reading a fairytale, we must let go our daylight convictions and trust ourselves to be guided by dark figures, in silence; and when we come back, it may be very hard to describe where we have been.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Letting Go, Reading, Dark
Ursula K. Le Guin, Susan Wood (1980). “The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction”, p.67, Ultramarine Publishing

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