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Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes - Page 17

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How can people be anything but ignorant when knowledge isn't saved, isn't taught?

How can people be anything but ignorant when knowledge isn't saved, isn't taught?

Ursula K. Le Guin
People, Ignorant, Taught
Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “Tales from Earthsea”, p.89, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Art is craft: all art is always and essentially a work of craft: but in the true work of art, before the craft and after it, is some essential durable core of being, which is what the craft works on, and shows, and sets free. The statue in the stone. How does the artist find that, see it, before it's visible? That is a real question.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Art, Real, Essentials
Ursula K. Le Guin (2004). “The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination”, p.207, Shambhala Publications

It is hard, I found, to be called traitor. Strange how hard it is, for it's an easy name to call another man.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Betrayal, Men, Names
Ursula K. Le Guin (2000). “The Left Hand of Darkness”, p.58, Penguin

Men who fight wars in winter don't live till spring.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Spring, War, Fighting
Ursula K. Le Guin (2016). “Worlds of Exile and Illusion: Three Complete Novels of the Hainish Series in One Volume--Rocannon's World; Planet of Exile; City of Illusions”, p.175, Macmillan

Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge); by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee, and are therefore more honored in their day than prophets); and by futurologists (salaried). Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Lying, Novelists, Prophet
Ursula K. Le Guin (2000). “The Left Hand of Darkness”, p.8, Penguin

I suppose the most important thing, the heaviest single factor in one's life, is whether one's born male or female. In most societies it determines one's expectations, activities, outlook, ethics, manners - almost everything. Vocabulary. Semiotic usages. Clothing. Even food. Women... women tend to eat less... It's extremely hard to separate the innate differences from the learned ones. Even where women participate equally with men in the society, they still after all do all the childbearing, and so most of the child-rearing.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Children, Men, Vocabulary
Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “The Left Hand Of Darkness”, p.149, Hachette UK

The model of modern Western civilization is the virus: the pure bit of information, which turns its environment into endless reproductions of itself.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Civilization, Viruses, Information

If you deny any affinity with another person or kind of person, if you declare it to be wholly different from yourself

Ursula K. Le Guin
Equality, Different, Kind
Ursula K. Le Guin, Susan Wood (1980). “The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction”, p.99, Ultramarine Publishing

The great authors share their souls with us- "literally.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Writing, Soul, Share

The pornography of violence of course far exceeds, in volume and general acceptance, sexual pornography, in this Puritan land of ours.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Acceptance, Land, Violence
Ursula K. Le Guin (1997). “Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places”, p.103, Grove Press

Writers have to get used to launching something beautiful and watching it crash and burn. They also have to learn when to let go control, when the work takes off on its own and flies, farther than they ever planned or imagined, to places they didn't know they knew.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Beautiful, Letting Go, Writing

You must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Change, Evil, Decision
A Wizard of Earthsea ch. 3 (1968)

In innocence there is no strength against evil, said Sparrowhawk, a little wryly. But there is strength in it for good.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Evil, Littles, Innocence
Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “The Farthest Shore”, p.113, Simon and Schuster

If a book were written all in numbers, it would be true. It would be just. Nothing said in words ever came out quite even. Things in words got twisted and ran together, instead of staying straight and fitting together. But underneath the words, at the center, like the center of the Square, it all came out even. Everything could change, yet nothing would be lost. If you saw the numbers you could see that, the balance, the pattern. You saw the foundations of the world. And they were solid.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Book, Numbers, Squares

Secondhand experience breaks down a block from the car lot.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Block, Car, Experience
Ursula K. Le Guin (1997). “Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places”, p.158, Grove Press

Truth is a matter of the imagination. The soundest fact may fail or prevail in the style of its telling: like that singular organic jewel of our seas, which grows brighter as one woman wears it and, worn by another, dulls and goes to dust.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Dust, Jewels, Sea
Ursula K. Le Guin (2000). “The Left Hand of Darkness”, p.11, Penguin

To see a candle's light, one must take it into a dark place. This is the same as to see the good and be grateful, one must compare and contrast it with something worse - not better!

Ursula K. Le Guin
Gratitude, Grateful, Dark

For a fiction writer, a storyteller, the world is full of stories, and when a story is there, it's there, and you just reach up and pick it.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Fiction, Stories, World
Ursula K. Le Guin (2004). “The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination”, p.207, Shambhala Publications

Planets were very large places, on any scale but that of the spaces in between them.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Space, Scales, Planets
Ursula K. Le Guin (2016). “Worlds of Exile and Illusion: Three Complete Novels of the Hainish Series in One Volume--Rocannon's World; Planet of Exile; City of Illusions”, p.431, Macmillan

Statesmen remember things selectively.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Remember, Statesmen
Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “The Other Wind”, p.87, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The king was pregnant.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Kings, Pregnant Women, Were Pregnant
The Left Hand of Darkness ch. 8 (1969)

As you see, I bear some resentment and some scars from the years of anti-genre bigotry. My own fiction, which moves freely around among realism, magical realism, science fiction, fantasy of various kinds, historical fiction, young adult fiction, parable, and other subgenres, to the point where much of it is ungenrifiable, all got shoved into the Sci Fi wastebasket or labeled as kiddilit - subliterature.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Moving, Years, Historical
"Ursula K. Le Guin talks about genres, gender, and broadening fiction". Interview with Michael Cunningham, electricliterature.com. April 2, 2016.

Happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive. In the middle category, however - that of the unnecessary but undestructive, that of comfort, luxury, exuberance, etc

Ursula K. Le Guin
Happiness, Luxury, Justice
Ursula K. Le Guin (2016). “The Unreal and the Real: The Selected Short Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin”, p.292, Simon and Schuster

Writers need to learn their trade, and how to negotiate the increasingly difficult marketplace. The trade can be taught and learned just as the craft can. But a workshop where the trade is the principal focus of interest is not a writing workshop. It is a business class.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Writing, Class, Focus
Ursula K. Le Guin (2004). “The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination”, p.253, Shambhala Publications

Well, the secret to writing is writing. It's only a secret to people who don't want to hear it. Writing is how you be a writer.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Writing, People, Secret
Ursula K. Le Guin (2004). “The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination”, p.262, Shambhala Publications

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