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Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes about Lying

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Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing -- instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there. Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth

Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing -- instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there. Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon. Not from above, but from below. Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourishes, where human beings grow human souls.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Country, Lying, Eye
A Left-Handed Commencement Address, delivered 22 May 1983, Mills College, Oakland, California

Light is the left hand of darkness and darkness the right hand of light. Two are one, life and death, lying together like lovers in kemmer, like hands joined together, like the end and the way.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Lying, Light, Hands
Ursula K. LeGuin (2017). “The Left Hand of Darkness”, p.193, Hachette UK

Lying is the misuse of language. We know that. We need to remember that it works the other way round too. Even with the best intentions, language misused, language used stupidly, carelessly, brutally, language used wrongly, breeds lies, half-truths, confusion. In that sense you can say that grammar is morality. And it is in that sense that I say a writer's first duty is to use language well.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Lying, Confusion, Needs
Ursula K. Le Guin (1998). “Steering the craft: exercises and discussions on story writing for the lone navigator or the mutinous crew”, The Eighth Mountain Press

Safety lies in catering to the in-group. We are not all brave. All I would ask of writers who find it hard to question the universal validity of their personal opinions and affiliations is that they consider this: Every group we belong to - by gender, sex, race, religion, age - is an in-group, surrounded by an immense out-group, living next door and all over the world, who will be alive as far into the future as humanity has a future. That out-group is called other people. It is for them that we write.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Sex, Lying, Writing
Ursula K. Le Guin (2004). “The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination”, p.197, Shambhala Publications

... 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

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

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

I think the mystery of art lies in this, that artists’ relationship is essentially with their work — not with power, not with profit, not with themselves, not even with their audience.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Art, Lying, Thinking

Almost everything is double like that for adolescents; their lies are true and their truths are lies, and their hearts are broken by the world. They gyre and fall; they see through everything, and are blind.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Lying, Fall, Heart
Ursula K. Le Guin, Todd Barton, Margaret Chodos-Irvine, George Hersh (1985). “Always Coming Home”, p.184, Univ of California Press

Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.... Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying.... Open your eyes; listen, listen. That is what the novelists say. But they don't tell you what you will see and hear. All they can tell you is what they have seen and heard, in their time in this world, a third of it spent in sleep and dreaming, another third of it spent in telling lies.

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

Between thought and spoken word is a gap where intention can enter, the symbol be twisted aside, and the lie come to be.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Lying, Gaps, Twisted
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.283, Macmillan

Belief in the lie is the life of the lie.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Lying, Belief
Ursula K. Le Guin (2009). “Powers”, p.294, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge); by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee, and are therefore more honored in their day than prophets); and by futurologists (salaried). Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying.

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

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

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