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Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes - Page 21

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We of Es Toch tell a little myth, which says that in the beginning the Creator told a great lie. For there was nothing at all, but the Creator spoke, saying, It exists. And behold, in order that the lie of God might be

We of Es Toch tell a little myth, which says that in the beginning the Creator told a great lie. For there was nothing at all, but the Creator spoke, saying, It exists. And behold, in order that the lie of God might be God's truth, the universe at once began to exist.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Lying, Order, Littles
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.386, Macmillan

Virginity is now a mere preamble or waiting room to be got out of as soon as possible; it is without significance.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Sex, Waiting Rooms, Preamble
Ursula K. Le Guin (1997). “Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places”, p.4, Grove Press

You are all in jail. Each alone, solitary, with a heap of what he owns. You live in prison, die in prison. It is all I can see in your eyes - the wall, the wall!

Ursula K. Le Guin
Wall, Eye, Jail
Ursula K. LeGuin (2015). “The Dispossessed”, p.101, Hachette UK

Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it is like anything else

Ursula K. Le Guin
Art, Writing, Mysterious

Abstractions about right and wrong, whether they are as old as Thou Shalt Not Kill or as modern as Do Your Own Thing, often serve only to confuse and weaken genuine moral decision.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Decision, Morality, Modern
Ursula K. Le Guin (1997). “Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places”, p.18, Grove Press

I don't believe that a writer 'gets' (takes into the head) an 'idea' (some sort of mental object) 'from' somewhere, and then turns it into words, and writes them on paper. At least in my experience, it doesn't work that way. The stuff has to be transformed into oneself, it has to be composted, before it can grow into a story.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Believe, Writing, Ideas
Ursula K. Le Guin (1997). “Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places”, p.194, Grove Press

Yet we were rescued by that fancy, and saved by a myth.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Fancy, Myth, Saved

It was men's ambitions, they said, that had perverted all the arts to ends of gain.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Art, Ambition, Men
Ursula K. Le Guin (2016). “The Found and the Lost: The Collected Novellas of Ursula K. Le Guin”, p.488, Simon and Schuster

Wrongs done could not be righted, but at least they were not still being done.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Done, Stills, Being Done
Ursula K. Le Guin (2010). “The Word for World is Forest”, p.106, Macmillan

Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Book, Return, Sanity
Ursula K. Le Guin (2000). “The Left Hand of Darkness”, p.9, Penguin

Age and illness made one a dualist

Ursula K. Le Guin
Age, Illness, Made
Ursula K. LeGuin (2015). “The Wind's Twelve Quarters”, p.229, Hachette UK

The notion that a story has a message assumes that it can be reduced to a few abstract words, neatly summarized in a school or college examination paper or a brisk critical review.

Ursula K. Le Guin
School, College, Paper
"A Message About Messages". Personal Website, www.ursulakleguin.com.

And he began to see the truth, that Ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had made himself whole: a man who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life's sake and never in the service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Pain, Dark, Men
Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “A Wizard of Earthsea”, p.214, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

We sleep researchers like cats, you know; they sleep a lot!

Ursula K. Le Guin
Sleep, Cat, Researchers
Ursula K Le Guin (2014). “The Lathe of Heaven”, p.72, Diversion Books

What is more arrogant than honesty?

Ursula K. Le Guin
Honesty, Arrogant
Ursula K. Le Guin (2000). “The Left Hand of Darkness”, p.147, Penguin

Genre fiction was looked at as a ghetto, but I wonder now if realist fiction, sealing itself off in the glum suburbs of a dysfunctional society, denying the use of imagination, was the ghetto.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Ghetto, Imagination, Fiction

Writers are egotists. All artists are. They can’t be altruists and get their work done. And writers love to whine about the Solitude of the Author’s Life, and lock themselves into cork-lined rooms or droop around in bars in order to whine better. But although most writing is done in solitude, I believe that it is done, like all the arts, for an audience. That is to say, with an audience. All the arts are performance arts, only some of them are sneakier about it than others.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Art, Believe, Writing

Nothing said in words ever came out quite even. Things in words got twisted and ran together, instead of staying straight and fitting together.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Together, Twisted, Fitting
Ursula K. Le Guin (2009). “The Dispossessed”, p.22, Harper Collins

Sleeping people are so remote.... Right here, but out of communication. That's what strikes humans as uncanny about sleep. Its utter privacy. The sleeper turns his back on everyone.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Communication, Sleep, People
Ursula K. Le Guin (1973). “The lathe of heaven”

To exhibit the perfect uselessness of knowing the answer to the wrong question.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Knowing, Perfect, Left Hand
Ursula K. Le Guin (2000). “The Left Hand of Darkness”, p.55, Penguin

All men were alien one to another, at times, not only aliens.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Men, Aliens
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.173, Macmillan

The airport bookstore did not sell books, only bestsellers, which Sita Dulip cannot read without risking a severe systemic reaction.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Book, Airports, Reactions

Realism is a very sophisticated form of literature, a very grown-up one. And that may be its weakness. But fantasy seems to be eternal and omnipresent and always attractive to kids.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Kids, Literature, May

When you work in form, be it a sonnet or villanelle or whatever, the form is there and you have to fill it. And you have to find how to make that form say what you want to say. But what you find, always--I think any poet who's worked in form will agree with me--is that the form leads you to what you want to say.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Thinking, Want, Poet

For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead Kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Kings, Men, Thinking
"The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia". Book by Ursula K. Le Guin, May 1974.

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