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Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes - Page 6

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The danger in trying to do good is that the mind comes to confuse the intent of goodness with the act of doing things well.

The danger in trying to do good is that the mind comes to confuse the intent of goodness with the act of doing things well.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Mind, Trying, Goodness
Ursula K. Le Guin (2016). “The Found and the Lost: The Collected Novellas of Ursula K. Le Guin”, p.514, Simon and Schuster

Great self-destruction follows upon unfounded fear.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Self, Self Destruction, Destruction
Ursula K. Le Guin (2008). “The Lathe Of Heaven: A Novel”, p.121, Simon and Schuster

One must work with time and not against it.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Time

A panda walks into a tea room and ordered a salad and ate it. Then it pulled out a pistol, shot the man in the next table dead, and walked out. Everyone rushed after it, shouting "Stop! Stop! Why did you do that?" "Becuase I am a panda," said the panda. "That's what pandas do. If you don't believe me, look in the dictionary." So they looked in the dictionary and sure enough they found Panda: Racoon-like animal of Asia. Eats shoots and leaves.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Believe, Men, Animal

What children don't understand, and can't understand until they grow up some, is how much the whole fabric and process of human society depends on everybody agreeing to ignore, most of the time, the fact that all of us are, most of the time, inadequate, incompetent, pitiful, and, in fact, naked to our enemies. None of us really has very much in the way of spiritual, moral clothing. We dress ourselves in rags. And we agree to say nothing about it. To a very large extent, it is human charity that clothes us.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Spiritual, Children, Growing Up

It had never occurred to me before that music and thinking are so much alike. In fact you could say music is another way of thinking, or maybe thinking is another kind of music.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Writing, Thinking, Way
Ursula K. Le Guin (2004). “Very Far Away from Anywhere Else”, p.52, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it... By using words well they strengthen their souls.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Mean, Soul, Who Cares

I certainly wasn't happy. Happiness has to do with reason, and only reason earns it. What I was given was the thing you can't earn, and can't keep, and often don't even recognize at the time; I mean joy.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Happiness, Time, Mean
Ursula K. Le Guin (2000). “The Left Hand of Darkness”, p.165, Penguin

As a kitten does what all other kittens do, so a child wants to do what other children do, with a wanting that is as powerful as it is mindless. Since we human beings have to learn what we do, we have to start out that way, but human mindfulness begins where that wish to be the same leaves off.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Children, Powerful, Wish
Ursula K. Le Guin, Todd Barton, Margaret Chodos-Irvine, George Hersh (1985). “Always Coming Home”, p.29, Univ of California Press

I don’t think ‘science fiction’ is a very good name for it, but it’s the name that we’ve got. It is different from other kinds of writing, I suppose, so it deserves a name of its own. But where I can get prickly and combative is, if I’m just called a sci-fi writer. I’m not. I’m a novelist and poet. Don’t shove me into your damn pigeonhole, where I don’t fit, because I’m all over. My tentacles are coming out of the pigeonhole in all directions.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Writing, Thinking, Names

Well, we think that time "passes," flows past us, but what if it is we who move forward, from past to future, always discovering the new? It would be a little like reading a book, you see. The book is all there, all at once, between its covers. But if you want to read the story and understand it, you must begin with the first page, and go forward, always in order. So the universe would be a very great book, and we would be very small readers.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Time, Moving, Book

The more defensive a society, the more conformist.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Conformist
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.321, Macmillan

It is useless work that darkens the heart.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Work, Heart, Useless
"The Dispossessed". Book by Ursula K. Le Guin, 1974.

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. What is the other text, the original? I have no answer. I suppose it is the source, the deep sea where ideas swim, and one catches them in nets of words and swings them shining into the boat... where in this metaphor they die and get canned and eaten in sandwiches.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Art, Writing, Swings

I went to the springs while the sun was still up, and sitting on a rocky outcrop above the cave mouth I watched the light grow reddish across the misty pools, and listened to the troubled voice of the water. After a while I moved farther up the hill, where I could hear birds singing near and far in the silence of the trees. The presence of the trees was very strong...The big oaks stood so many, so massive in their other life, in their deep, rooted silence: the awe of them came on me, the religion.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Strong, Spring, Light
Ursula K. Le Guin (2008). “Lavinia”, p.37, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel. The rabbit shrieks dying in the green meadows. The mountains clench their great hands full of hidden fire. There are sharks in the sea, and there is cruelty in men's eyes.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Beautiful, Eye, Dark
Ursula K. LeGuin (2015). “The Tombs of Atuan: The Second Book of Earthsea”, p.53, Hachette UK

Love does not obey the mind, and turns to hate when forced.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Hate, Mind, Doe
Ursula K. LeGuin (2015). “The Dispossessed”, p.130, Hachette UK

To be whole is to be part; true voyage is return.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Voyages, Return, Whole
"The Word for World Is Forest". Book by Ursula K. Le Guin, 1972.

Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Light, Choices Made, May
Ursula K. Le Guin (2004). “The Tombs of Atuan: Book Two”, p.157, Simon and Schuster

I think hard times are coming. We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries, the realists of a larger reality.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Hard Times, Reality, Thinking
Ursula K. Le Guin (2018). “Dreams Must Explain Themselves: The Selected Non-Fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin”, p.441, Hachette UK

What is life without incompatible realities?

Ursula K. Le Guin
Reality, What Is Life

Maybe when you meet the people you are supposed to meet you know it, without knowing it.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Knowing, People, Knows
Ursula K. Le Guin (2004). “Very Far Away from Anywhere Else”, p.26, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Animals do neither good nor evil. They do as they must do.We may call what they do harmful or useful, but good and evil belong to us, who chose to choose what we do. [. . .] The animals need only be and do.We're yoked, and they're free. So to be with an animal is to know a little freedom.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Animal, Evil, Needs

We scarcely know how much of our pleasure and interest in life comes to us through our eyes until we have to do without them; and part of that pleasure is that the eyes can choose where to look. But the ears can't choose where to listen.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Eye, Looks, Ears
Ursula K. Le Guin (2006). “Gifts”, p.165, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The sunlights differ, but there is only one darkness.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Light, Darkness, Sunlight

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