My great-aunt. . . . said nobody under 18 had any business reading Dickens. . . . She was right. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Writing makes no noise, except groans, and it can be done everywhere, and it is done alone. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
When people say, Did you always want to be a writer?, I have to say no! I always WAS a writer. — 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
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
I get a lot of moral guidance from reading novels, so I guess I expect my novels to offer some moral guidance,… — 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
See, the thing is, as a writer you are free. You are about the freest person that ever was. Your freedom is… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“This writing doesn't affect reality any more than any writing does; that is to say, indirectly, but considerably.” — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Skill in writing frees you to write what you want to write. It may also show you what you want to write.… — 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
If one believes that words are acts, as I do, then one must hold writers responsible for what their words do. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
If a book told you something when you were fifteen, it will tell you it again when you're fifty, though you may… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“Contrast J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. The author adopts the childish view of adults as inhumanly powerful and uncomprehending, and… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
After a long time spent learning how to write as a woman instead of as an honorary man, I was able to… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
To read and to write. Some writers have to be told to write. They think their job is to meet agents and… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“But I liked the writing better. I could make it look beautiful. I could keep it. The spoken words just went out… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Whenever they tell me children want this sort of book and children need this sort of writing, I am going to smile… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Writers need to learn their trade, and how to negotiate the increasingly difficult marketplace. The trade can be taught and learned just… — 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
“A book won't move your eyes for you like TV or a movie does. A book won't move your mind unless you… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“Realism is for lazy-minded, semi-educated people whose atrophied imagination allows them to appreciate only the most limited and convention subject matter. Re-Fi… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“In its silence, a book is a challenge: it can't lull you with surging music or deafen you with screeching laugh tracks… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“All they're trying to do is tell you what they're like, and what you're like—what's going on—what the weather is now, today,… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
as a writer you are free. You are about the freest person that ever was. Your freedom is what you have bought… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
If you have to find devices to coax yourself to stay focused on writing, perhaps you should not be writing what you're… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
I believe that all novels, ... deal with character, and that it is to express character – not to preach doctrines, sing… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“If it is a human thing to do to put something you want, because it's useful, edible, or beautiful, into a bag,… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
O foolish writer. Now moves. Even in storytime, dreamtime, once-upon-a-time, now isn't then. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“A writer's moral duty is to use language thoughtfully and well.” — 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
