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Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes - Page 9

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Truth is a matter of the imagination.

Truth is a matter of the imagination.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Imagination, Matter, Truth Is
Ursula K. Le Guin, Susan Wood (1980). “The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction”, p.131, Ultramarine Publishing

I talk about the gods, I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Atheist, Liars, Artist
Ursula K. Le Guin (2000). “The Left Hand of Darkness”, p.9, Penguin

But you must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A wizard's power of Changing and Summoning can shake the balance of the world. It is dangerous, that power...It must follow knowledge, and serve need.

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

The backside of heroism is often rather sad; women and servants know that. They know also that the heroism may be no less real for that. But achievement is smaller than men think. What is large is the sky, the earth, the sea, the soul.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Real, Men, Thinking
Ursula K. Le Guin (2016). “The Unreal and the Real: The Selected Short Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin”, p.599, Simon and Schuster

Fiction writers, at least in their braver moments, do desire the truth: to know it, speak it, serve it. But they go about it in a peculiar and devious way, which consists in inventing persons, places, and events which never did and never will exist or occur, and telling about these fictions in detail and at length and with a great deal of emotion, and then when they are done writing down this pack of lies, they say, There! That's the truth!

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

Saying that, he was suddenly himself again, despite his lunatic hair and eyes: a man whose personal dignity went so deep as to be nearly invisible... It was more than diginity. Integrity? Wholeness? Like a block of wood not carved. The infinite possibility, the unlimited and unqualified wholeness of being of the uncommitted, the nonacting, the uncarved: the being who, being nothing but himself, is everything.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Block, Integrity, Eye

Primitiveness and civilization are degrees of the same thing. If civilization has an opposite, it is war.

Ursula K. Le Guin
War, Opposites, Civilization
Ursula K. Le Guin (2000). “The Left Hand of Darkness”, p.77, Penguin

Compare the torrent and the glacier. Both get where they are going.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Glaciers, Compare
Ursula K. Le Guin (2000). “The Left Hand of Darkness”, p.75, Penguin

You cannot blame everything on the enemy.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Responsibility, Enemy, Blame
Gene Wolfe, Ursula K. Le Guin, James Tiptree (1975). “The new Atlantis and other novellas of science fiction”

Can true function arise from basic dysfunction?

Ursula K. Le Guin
Dysfunction, Arise, Function

There was one person who greatly and directly benefited my career--my agent Virginia Kidd. From 1968 to the late nineties she represented all my work, in every field except poetry. I could send her an utterly indescribable story, and she'd sell it to Playboy or the Harvard Law Review or Weird Tales or The New Yorker--she knew where to take it. She never told me what to write or not write, she never told me, That won't sell, and she never meddled with my prose.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Writing, Careers, Virginia

Scientific truth will out, you can't hide the sun under a stone.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Science, Stones, Sun

True understanding is the spur of genius

Ursula K. Le Guin
Understanding, Mentor, Spurs

There is a limited number of plots. There is no limit to the number of stories.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Numbers, Limits, Plot

I'd rather get bad news from an honest man than lies from a flatterer.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Lying, Men, News
Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “The Other Wind”, p.68, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Paradise is for those who make paradise.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Paradise
Ursula K. LeGuin (2015). “The Dispossessed”, p.42, Hachette UK

A man does not make his destiny: he accepts it or denies it.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Fate, Destiny, Men
Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “The Farthest Shore”, p.29, Simon and Schuster

Who knows a man's name, holds that man's life in his keeping. Thus to Ged, who had lost faith in himself, Vetch had given him that gift that only a friend can give, the proof of unshaken, unshakeable trust.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Men, Names, Giving
Ursula K. LeGuin (2015). “A Wizard of Earthsea: The First Book of Earthsea”, p.34, Hachette UK

I believe that maturity is not an outgrowing, but a growing up: that an adult is not a dead child, but a child who survived.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Children, Growing Up, Believe
Ursula K. Le Guin, Susan Wood (1980). “The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction”, p.44, Ultramarine Publishing

When the enemy enthusiastically embraces you, and the fellow countrymen bitterly reject you, it is hard not to wonder if you are, in fact, a traitor.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Rejects You, Enemy, Facts

The bond between true lovers is as close as we come to what endures forever.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Life, Forever, Lovers
Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “The Other Wind”, p.199, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

By and large books are mankind's best invention.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Book, Invention, Mankind

What is love of one's country; is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing. Is it simply self-love? That's a good thing, but one musn't make a virtue of it, or a profession...Insofar as I love life, I love [my country], but that sort of love does not have a boundary-line of hate. And beyond that, I am ignorant, I hope.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Country, Hate, Love Life

It always seemed to me they're sort of alike ... magic and music. Spells and tunes. For one thing, you have to get them just exactly right.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Magic, Tunes, Spells
Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “Tales from Earthsea”, p.145, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The desire for power feeds off itself, growing as it devours.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Desire, Growing, Desire For Power
Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “Tales from Earthsea”, p.106, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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