I did not deliberately invent Earthsea, I did not think…

“...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

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

“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

“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

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

“. . . 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

“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

“The author is not impartial. Dystopia is not tragedy.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin

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

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

“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

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

“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

“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

“Can women operate as women in a male institution without becoming imitation men?”

— Ursula K. Le Guin