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Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes - Page 8

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I am living in a nightmare, from which from time to time I wake in sleep.

I am living in a nightmare, from which from time to time I wake in sleep.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Life, Depression, Sleep
Ursula K. Le Guin (2008). “The Lathe Of Heaven: A Novel”, p.38, Simon and Schuster

Fake realism is the escapist literature of our time. And probably the ultimate escapist reading is that masterpiece of total unreality, the daily stock market report.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Reading, Fake, Literature
Ursula K. Le Guin, Susan Wood (1980). “The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction”, p.42, Ultramarine Publishing

At this point, realism is perhaps the least adequate means of understanding or portraying the incredible realities of our existence.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Mean, Reality, Understanding
Ursula K. Le Guin, Susan Wood (1980). “The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction”, p.58, Ultramarine Publishing

A person who believes, as she did, that things fit: that there is a whole of which one is a part, and that in being a part one is whole: such a person has no desire whatever, at any time, to play God. Only those who have denied their being yearn to play at it.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Believe, Play, Desire
Ursula K. Le Guin (2008). “The Lathe Of Heaven: A Novel”, p.108, Simon and Schuster

Sometimes a god comes.... He brings a new way to do a thing, or a new thing to be done. A new kind of singing, or a new kind of death. He brings this across the bridge between the dream-time and the world-time. When he has done this, it is done. You cannot take things that exist in the world and try to drive them back into the dream, to hold them inside the dream with walls and pretenses. That is insanity. What is, is. There is no use pretending, now, that we do not know how to kill one another.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Dream, Wall, Bridges
"The Word for World Is Forest". Book by Ursula K. Le Guin, 1972.

What is a woman's power then?" she asked. "I don't think we know." "When has a woman power because she's a woman? With her children, I suppose. For a while..." "In her house, maybe." She looked around the kitchen. "But the doors are shut," she said, "the doors are locked." "Because you're valuable." "Oh yes. We're precious. So long as we're powerless.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Children, Thinking, Doors
Ursula K. LeGuin (2015). “Tehanu: The Fourth Book of Earthsea”, p.90, Hachette UK

And I speak of spiritual suffering! Of people seeing their talent, their work, their lives wasted. Of good minds submitting to stupid ones. Of strength and courage strangled by envy, greed for power, fear of change. Change is freedom, change is life

Ursula K. Le Guin
Spiritual, Stupid, People
Ursula K. LeGuin (2015). “The Dispossessed”, p.75, Hachette UK

Do nothing because it is righteous or praiseworthy or noble to do so; do nothing because it seems good to do so; do only that which you must do and which you cannot do in any other way.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Noble, Way, Righteous
Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “The Farthest Shore”, p.85, Simon and Schuster

There's a great fear of the imagination. It's a dangerous thing. It's out of control, it's subversive.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Imagination, Dangerous, Dangerous Things

Our model of the cosmos must be as inexhaustible as the cosmos. A complexity that includes not only duration but creation, not only being but becoming, not only geometry but ethics. It is not the answer we are after, but only how to ask the question.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Cosmos, Answers, Duration
"The Dispossessed". Book by Ursula K. Le Guin, 1974.

I have never heard a dancer asking for advice about how to stay focused on her footwork, or a painter complaining about the dull day-to-day task of painting. What task worth doing isn't worth daily effort? Do you think Michelangelo was having fun the whole time he was on his back painting the Sistine Chapel's ceiling?

Ursula K. Le Guin
Fun, Writing, Thinking
Teenreads Interview, www.teenreads.com. September 2006.

The fish in the creek said nothing. Fish never do. Few people know what fish think about injustice, or anything else.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Thinking, People, Injustice
Ursula K. Le Guin, Ursula Leguin (2015). “Catwings”, p.27, Scholastic Inc.

Why can I never set my heart on a possible thing?

Ursula K. Le Guin
Hope, Heart, Ambition
URSULA K. LE GUIN (1976). “THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS”

The search for pleasure is circular, repetitive, atemporal. The variety seeking of the spectator, the thrill hunter, the sexually promiscuous, always ends in the same place. It has an end. It comes to the end and has to start over. It is not a journey and return, but a closed cycle, a locked room, a cell.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Journey, Cells, Starting Over

The hunger of a dragon is slow to wake, but hard to sate.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Dragons, Hunger, Hard
Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “A Wizard of Earthsea”, p.91, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I have told the story I was asked to tell. I have closed it, as so many stories close, with a joining of two people. What is one man's and one woman's love and desire, against the history of two worlds, the great revolutions of our lifetimes, the hope, the unending cruelty of our species? A little thing. But a key is a little thing, next to the door it opens. If you lose the key, the door may never be unlocked. It is in our bodies that we lose or begin our freedom, in our bodies that we accept or end our slavery. So I wrote this book for my friend, with whom I have lived and will die free.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Book, Men, Doors

To oppose something is to maintain it.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Law Of Attraction
Ursula K. Le Guin (2000). “The Left Hand of Darkness”, p.108, Penguin

Readers, after all, are making the world with you. You give them the materials, but it's the readers who build that world in their own minds.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Writing, Giving, Empathy

If civilization has an opposite, it is war. Of these two things, you have either one, or the other. Not both.

Ursula K. Le Guin
War, Opposites, Civilization

Sci-fi uses the images that sf - starting with H.G. Wells - made familiar: space travel, aliens, galactic wars and federations, time machines, et cetera, taking them literally, not caring if they are possible or even plausible. It has no interest in or relation to real science or technology. It's fantasy in space suits. Spectacle. Wizards with lasers. Kids with ray guns. I've written both, but I have to say I respect science fiction enough that I wince when people call it sci-fi.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Real, War, Kids

Would you really like to live in a society where you have no responsibility and no freedom, no choice, only the false option of obedience to the law, or disobedience followed by punishment? Would you really want to go live in a prison?

Ursula K. Le Guin
Responsibility, Law, Punishment
Ursula K. Le Guin (2009). “The Dispossessed”, p.31, Harper Collins

Ah, genre. A word only a Frenchman could love.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Genre, Frenchmen

... the habit of literature [is] the best defense against believing the half-truths of ideologues and the lies of demagogues.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Lying, Believe, Defense

We broke the world to make it whole.

Ursula K. Le Guin
World, Broke, Whole
Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “The Other Wind”, p.262, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I have decided that the trouble with print is, it never changes its mind.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Book, Reading, Mind
Ursula K. Le Guin (1997). “Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places”, p.7, Grove Press

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