We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
A dangerous book will always be in danger from those it threatens with the demand that they question their assumptions. They'd rather… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Readers, after all, are making the world with you. You give them the materials, but it's the readers who build that world… — 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
Well, the secret to writing is writing. It's only a secret to people who don't want to hear it. Writing is how… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Every book purchase made from Amazon is a vote for a culture without content and without contentment. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it... By using words well they… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“I tend to avoid fiction about dysfunctional urban middle-class people written in the present tense. This makes it hard to find a… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
I don't believe that a writer 'gets' (takes into the head) an 'idea' (some sort of mental object) 'from' somewhere, and then… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
It's probably simply a matter of temperament that I never stopped to wonder if I could "match" what I had done, never… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Writers have to get used to launching something beautiful and watching it crash and burn. They also have to learn when to… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
I think there is no way to write about being alone. To write is to tell something to somebody to communicate to… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
The label YA actually means nothing except that the protagonists, or some of them, are young. Publishers like it because it is… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading,… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“The one thing a writer has to have is a pencil and some paper. That's enough, so long as she knows that… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their… — 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
Writers are egotists. All artists are. They can’t be altruists and get their work done. And writers love to whine about the… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
No matter how successful, beloved, influential her work was, when a woman author dies, nine times out of ten, she gets dropped… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“The book itself is a curious artifact, not showy in its technology but complex and extremely efficient: a really neat little device,… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
If you want your writing to be taken seriously, don't marry and have kids, and above all, don't die. But if you… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
A story rises from the springs of creation, from the pure will to be; it tells itself; I takes its own course,… — 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
