Authors:

Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes - Page 5

All Quotes Acceptance Age Aliens Ambition Art Balance Belief Betrayal Capitalism Character Children Choices Communication Consciousness Country Darkness Desire Earth Empathy Equality Evil Evolution Fate Feelings Freedom Funny Giving Grieving Growing Up Happiness Hate Hatred Healing Heart Hell Home House Humility Imagination Injustice Insanity Inspirational Journey Joy Language Life Life And Death Literature Lying Moon Morality Myth Pain Peace Perception Progress Reading Reality Responsibility Revolution Running Sanity Science Science Fiction Silence Sleep Solitude Soul Spring Suffering Technology Time Understanding Violence Virtue Waiting Wall War Wilderness Winning Writing
First sentences are doors to worlds.

First sentences are doors to worlds.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Doors, World, Firsts
Ursula K. Le Guin (2018). “Dreams Must Explain Themselves: The Selected Non-Fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin”, p.200, Hachette UK

Go to bed; tired is stupid.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Stupid, Tired, Bed
Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “A Wizard of Earthsea”, p.83, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply?

Ursula K. Le Guin
Fall, Sunset, Autumn
Ursula K. Le Guin (2000). “The Left Hand of Darkness”, p.146, Penguin

No society can change the nature of existence. We can't prevent suffering. This pain and that pain, yes, but not Pain. A society can only relieve social suffering, unnecessary suffering. The rest remains. The root, the reality.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Pain, Reality, Roots

To claim power over what you do not understand is not wise, nor is the end of it likely to be good.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Wise, Ends, Claims
Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “The Farthest Shore”, p.69, Simon and Schuster

Elegance is a small price to pay for enlightenment, and I was glad to pay it.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Enlightenment, Pay, Elegance
Ursula K. Le Guin (2000). “The Left Hand of Darkness”, p.87, Penguin

Every book purchase made from Amazon is a vote for a culture without content and without contentment.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Book, Contentment, Amazon
"Ursula K Le Guin launches broadside on Amazon's 'sell it fast, sell it cheap' policy" by Marta Bausells, www.theguardian.com. June 3, 2015.

The book itself is a curious artifact, not showy in its technology but complex and extremely efficient: a really neat little device, compact, often very pleasant to look at and handle, that can last decades, even centuries. It doesn't have to be plugged in, activated, or performed by a machine; all it needs is light, a human eye, and a human mind. It is not one of a kind, and it is not ephemeral. It lasts. It is reliable.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Book, Eye, Technology

I hope you are never victims, but I hope you have no power over other people.

Ursula K. Le Guin
People, Victim, Power Over Others
A Left-Handed Commencement Address, delivered 22 May 1983, Mills College, Oakland, California

As a man's real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing,but does only and wholly what he must do.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Real, Men, Doe
Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “A Wizard of Earthsea”, p.85, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

In the tale, in the telling, we are all one blood. Take the tale in your teeth, then, and bite till the blood runs, hoping it's not poison; and we will all come to the end together, and even to the beginning: living, as we do, in the middle.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Running, Writing, Blood
Ursula K. Le Guin (1997). “Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places”, p.30, Grove Press

Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings

Ursula K. Le Guin
Divine Right, Changed, Humans
Ursula K. Le Guin (2016). “Words Are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books, 2000-2016, with a Journal of a WriterÕs Week”, p.115, Small Beer Press

Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art - the art of words.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Art, Divine Right, Resistance
Ursula K. Le Guin (2016). “Words Are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books, 2000-2016, with a Journal of a WriterÕs Week”, p.115, Small Beer Press

What's wrong with men?" Tenar inquired cautiously. As cautiously, lowering her voice, Moss replied, "I don't know, my dearie. I've thought on it. Often I've thought on it. The best I can say it is like this. A man's in his skin, see, like a nut in its shell." She held up her long, bent, wet fingers as if holding a walnut. "It's hard and strong, that shell, and it's all full of him. Full of grand man-meat, man-self. And that's all. That's all there is. It's all him and nothing else, inside.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Strong, Men, Self

If it were proven that there is no God there would be no religion. ...But also if it were proven that there is a God, there would be no religion.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Inspirational, Life, God
Ursula K. Le Guin (2000). “The Left Hand of Darkness”, p.56, Penguin

You can’t crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them. By refusing to think, refusing to change.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Crush, Thinking, Ideas
Ursula K. LeGuin (2015). “The Dispossessed”, p.74, Hachette UK

The same old hypocrisy. Life is a fight, and the strongest wins. All civilization does is hide the blood and cover up the hate with pretty words!

Ursula K. Le Guin
Hate, Fighting, Winning

A writer either speaks to adults and bores kids, or speaks to kids and upsets adults.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Writing, Kids, Upset

What is love of one's country; is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Country, Hate, What Is Love
Ursula K. Le Guin (2000). “The Left Hand of Darkness”, p.146, Penguin

When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Funny, Humor, Sleep
The Left Hand of Darkness ch. 3 (1969)

We're each of us alone, to be sure. What can you do but hold your hand out in the dark?

Ursula K. Le Guin
Dark, Hands
URSULA K. LE GUIN (1975). “The Wind's Twelve Quarters”

To oppose something is to maintain it... You must go somewhere else; you must have another goal; then you walk a different road.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Somewhere Else, Goal, Different
Ursula K. Le Guin (2000). “The Left Hand of Darkness”, p.108, Penguin

Jungians such as Joseph Campbell have generalised such journeys into a set of archetypal events and images. Though they can be useful in criticism, I mistrust them as fatally reductive. “Ah, the Night Sea Voyage!” we cry, feeling that we have understood something important — but we’ve merely recognised it. Until we are actually on that voyage, we have understood nothing.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Night, Journey, Sea

What is the use trying to describe the flowing of a river at any one moment, and then at the next moment, and then at the next, and the next, and the next? You wear out. You say: There is a great river, and it flows through this land, and we have named it History.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Land, Rivers, Trying
Ursula K. Le Guin (2016). “The Found and the Lost: The Collected Novellas of Ursula K. Le Guin”, p.287, Simon and Schuster

We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Peace, Volcanoes, Feminism
Ursula K. Le Guin (1997). “Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places”, p.160, Grove Press

You May Also Like: