If science fiction is the mythology of modern technology, then its myth is tragic. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
I don't write tracts, I write novels. I'm not a preacher, I'm a fiction writer. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
One of the things [fiction] does is lead you to recognize what you did not know before. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
The reader can't take much for granted in a fiction where the scenery can eat the characters. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
The artist deals in what cannot be said in words. The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words. The novelist… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
To think that realistic fiction is by definition superior to imaginative fiction is to think imitation is superior to invention. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Genre fiction was looked at as a ghetto, but I wonder now if realist fiction, sealing itself off in the glum suburbs… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Part of the particular interest and beauty of science fiction and fantasy: writer and reader collaborate in world-making. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
The use of imaginative fiction is to deepen your understanding of your world, and your fellow men, and your own feelings, and… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
For a fiction writer, a storyteller, the world is full of stories, and when a story is there, it's there, and you… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“I write science fiction because that is what publishers call my books. Left to myself, I should call them novels.” — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
If you're a fiction writer, though, I can tell you how to let people talk through you. Listen. Just be quiet, and… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Do remember, though, that unless you're a playwright, the result [dialogue] isn't what you want; it's only an element of what you… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
I think what's happening is, it's all - fantasy, science fiction, ghosts, trolls, whatever - finally being called, being admitted to be… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
As you see, I bear some resentment and some scars from the years of anti-genre bigotry. My own fiction, which moves freely… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
I came into science fiction at a very good time, when the doors were getting thrown open to all kinds of more… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“...[T]he only means I have to stop ignorant snobs from behaving towards genre fiction with snobbish ignorance is to not reinforce their… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Fantasy is not antirational, but pararational; not realistic but surrealistic, a heightening of reality. In Freud's terminology, it employs primary not secondary… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
There are very real differences between science fiction and realistic fiction, between horror and fantasy, between romance and mystery. Differences in writing… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“Fiction offers the best means of understanding people different from oneself, short of experience. Actually, fiction can be lots better than experience,… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
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… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Sci-fi uses the images that sf - starting with H.G. Wells - made familiar: space travel, aliens, galactic wars and federations, time… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
The pornography of violence of course far exceeds, in volume and general acceptance, sexual pornography, in this Puritan land of ours. Exploiting… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“All fiction is metaphor. Science fiction is metaphor. What sets it apart from older forms of fiction seems to be its use… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive… Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“Science Fiction properly conceived, like all serious fiction, however funny, is a way of trying to describe what is going on, what… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
...fiction is made out of the writer's experience, his whole life from infancy on, everything he's thought and done and seen and… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“When asked to "define the difference between fantasy and science fiction," I mouth and mumble and always end up talking about the… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“The purpose of a thought-experiment, as the term was used by Schrödinger and other physicists, is not to predict the future -… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Dragons are more dangerous, and a good deal commoner, than bears. Fantasy is nearer to poetry, to mysticism, and to insanity than… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge); by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee, and are therefore more honored in their… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Science fiction properly conceived, like all serious fiction, however funny, is a way of trying to describe what is in fact going… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Science fiction - and the correct shortcut is 'sf' - uses actual scientific facts or theories for the source ideas or framework… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“...I wore his blood for clothing, on my legs and thighs and hands: a dry, stiff, brown garment with no warmth in it.” — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it is like… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
“Aeneas' mother is a star?" "No; a goddess." I said cautiously, "Venus is the power that we invoke in spring, in the garden, when… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
“Meaning - this is perhaps the common note, the bane I am seeking. What is the Meaning of this book, this event in the… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
For fantasy is true, of course. It isn't factual, but it is true. Children know that. Adults know it too, and that is precisely… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
“. . . chronosophy does involve ethics. Because our sense of time involves our ability to separate cause and effect, means and end. The… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
“If both you and your plane are on time, the airport is merely a diffuse, short, miserable prelude to the intense, long, miserable plane… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
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 Copy Share
I have no control over my writing. I have lots of good intentions, but no control. There's a story that wants to be told. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
“I did a lot today. That is, I did something. The only thing I have ever done. I pressed a button. It took the… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
To me the female principle is, or at least historically has been, basically anarchic. It values order without constraint, rule by custom not by… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
“Hector had no virtue?” “Of course he did. He won all his battles, till the last one.” “We all do,” Aeneas remarked.” — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
“I was willing to believe him that most modern writing was trash, on the evidence that so much old writing was trash; but I… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
“Can women operate as women in a male institution without becoming imitation men?” — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share