“It is not death that allows us to understand each other, but poetry.” — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“For a word to be spoken, there must be silence. Before, and after.” — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
A moral choice in its basic terms appears to be a choice that favors survival: a choice made in favor of life. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Art is action. The way I live my life to its highest degree is by writing, the practice of art. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“One keeps oneself neat out of mere decency mere sanity, awareness of other people. And finally even that goes, and one dribbles… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
To see that your life is a story while you're in the middle of living it may be a help to living… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
At this point, realism is perhaps the least adequate means of understanding or portraying the incredible realities of our existence. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“Odo said it all her life. 'Only peace brings peace, only just acts bring justice!” — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
I never knew anybody . . . who found life simple. I think a life or a time looks simple when you… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Who knows a man's name, holds that man's life in his keeping. Thus to Ged, who had lost faith in himself, Vetch… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
We have been civilized for a thousand millennia. We have histories of hundreds of those millennia. We have tried everything. Anarchism, in… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
We scarcely know how much of our pleasure and interest in life comes to us through our eyes until we have to… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
All or nothing at all, the true lover says, and that's the truth of it. My love will never die, he says.… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
What you love, you will love. What you undertake you will complete. You are a fulfiller of hope; you are to be… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“The Veksi are an angry species. Their social life consists largely of arguments, recriminations, quarrels, fights, outbursts of fury, fits of the… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
And I speak of spiritual suffering! Of people seeing their talent, their work, their lives wasted. Of good minds submitting to stupid… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
If you see a whole thing - it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives... But up close a world's all dirt… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“Our daily life in the auntring was repetitive. On the ship, later, I learned that people who live in artificially complicated situations… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
When I was young, I had to choose between the life of being and the life of doing. And I leapt at… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“The body is an arrangement in spacetime, a patterning, a process; the mind is a process of the body, an organ, doing… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
The preservation of life seems to be rather a slogan than a genuine goal of the anti-abortion forces; what they want is… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
What you select from, in order to tell your story, is nothing less than everything. What you build up your world from,… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“If you can see a thing whole, it seems that it's always beautiful. Planet,lives...But close up, a world's all dirt and rocks.… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“We came, Takver thought, from a great distance to each other. We have always done so. Over great distances, over years, over… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“If you can see a thing whole," he said, "it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives...But close up, a world's all… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“It exists,” Shevek said, spreading out his hands. “It’s real. I can call it a misunderstanding, but I can’t pretend that it… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
If it were proven that there is no God there would be no religion. ...But also if it were proven that there… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
A profound love between two people involves, after all, the power and chance of doing profound hurt. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
When the genuine myth rises into consciousness, that is always its message. You must change your life. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
We decided that it was no good asking what is the meaning of life, because life isn't an answer, life is the… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
The only thing that makes life possible is a permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
The living tongue that tells the word, the living ear that hears it, bind and bond us in the communion we long… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
While we read a novel, we are insane—bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren't there, we hear their voices...… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“She thought about how it was to have been a woman in the prime of life, with children and a man, and… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
I don't teach writing classes anymore, and I'm really glad I don't, because I would feel very strange about telling people, 'Go… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Living in a world that is valued only as gain, an ever-expanding world-as-frontier that has no worth of its own, no fullness… — 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
