Ursula K. Le Guin

“...insofar as one denies what is, one is possessed by what is not, the compulsions, the fantasies, the terrors that flock to…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

“The elimination of war. Did the Ancient Hainish postulate that continuous sexual capacity and organized social aggression, neither of which are attributes…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

No society can change the nature of existence. We can't prevent suffering. This pain and that pain, yes, but not Pain. A…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

“Our entire pattern of socio-sexual interaction is nonexistent here. They cannot play the game. They do not see one another as men…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

What she needs, at least one thing she needs, is companionship. After all why should she eat? Who needs her to be…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

“Ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had made himself whole: a…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

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

“The life of every man is in the Center of Time, for all were seen in the seeing of Meshe, and are…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

“My mother died at eighty-three, of cancer, in pain, her spleen enlarged so that her body was misshapen. Is that the person…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

“This weight of verifiable place-event-phenomenon-behavior makes the reader forget that he is reading a pure invention, a history that never took place…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

“How does one hate a country, or love one?... I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

“The lynx lives at the High Desert Museum. Briefly, when he was a kitten somebody pulled out his claws (“declawing” a cat…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

For fantasy is true, of course. It isn't factual, but it is true. Children know that. Adults know it too, and that…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

“With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city. Omelas, bright-towered by the…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

What good is music? None ... and that is the point. To the world and its states and armies and factories and…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

“Farfetching. What one is after when farfetching might be described as the intuitive perception of a moral entirety; and thus it tends…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

It was easy to share when there was enough, even barely enough, to go round. But when there was not enough? Then…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

“It goes right back to the idea of the Power of Positive Thinking, which is so strong in America because it fits…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

The search for pleasure is circular, repetitive, atemporal. The variety seeking of the spectator, the thrill hunter, the sexually promiscuous, always ends…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

We of Es Toch tell a little myth, which says that in the beginning the Creator told a great lie. For there…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

“And hearing it that way as a kid, I thought, Hunh? but didn’t say anything, because there is no way, no possible…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

When you work in form, be it a sonnet or villanelle or whatever, the form is there and you have to fill…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

“The heavy work requiring muscle and the skilled work with crops and sheep was done by Ged, Shandy, and Tenar, while the…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

My world, my Earth is a ruin. A planet spoiled by the human species. We multiplied and fought and gobbled until there…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

My soul is ten thousand miles wide and extremely invisibly deep. It is the same size as the sea, and you cannot,…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

“ 'But I might ask you as profitably why you've never seen fit to invent airborne vehicles? One small stolen airplane would…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

Abstractions about right and wrong, whether they are as old as Thou Shalt Not Kill or as modern as Do Your Own…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

“He saw time turn back upon itself, a river flowing upward to the spring. He held the contemporaneity of two moments in…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

Those who dislike fantasy are very often equally bored or repelled by science. They don't like either hobbits, or quasars; they don't…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

Legends of prediction are common throughout the whole Household of Man. Gods speak, spirits speak, computers speak. Oracular ambiguity or statistical probability…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

“It appears that we've given up on the long-range view. That we've decided not to think about consequences—about cause and effect. Maybe…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

“The duty of the individual is to accept no rule, to be the initiator of his own acts, to be responsible. Only…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

Success is somebody else's failure. Success is the American Dream we can keep dreaming because most people in most places, including thirty…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

“They made love. Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; re-made all the time,…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

You fear them because you fear death, and rightly: for death is terrible and must be feared,' the mage said...'And life is…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

“The means are the end, only peace brings peace, only just acts bring justice...the separation of means and ends was false. For…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

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

“Partnership was a voluntarily constituted federation like any other. So long as it worked, it worked, and if it didn’t work it…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

“But the death of a great mage, who has many times in his life walked on the dry steep hillsides of death’s…

— Ursula K. Le Guin