Book Quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin

28 Book quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin

All Book quotes Ursula K. Le Guin’s page

Le Guin’s musings on reading weave together imagination and responsibility, reminding us that a book can be both a portal and a compass. In twenty‑eight brief passages you’ll find her signature blend of wonder and moral clarity.

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Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.

Ursula K. Le Guin

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“a book is a box of words until you open it.”

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We read books to find out who we are.

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By and large books are mankind's best invention.

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I have decided that the trouble with print is, it never changes its mind.

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“I write science fiction because that is what publishers call my books. Left to myself, I should call them novels.”

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Every book purchase made from Amazon is a vote for a culture without content and without contentment.

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The airport bookstore did not sell books, only bestsellers, which Sita Dulip cannot read without risking a severe systemic reaction.

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Children know perfectly well that unicorns aren’t real, but they also know that books about unicorns, if they are good books, are…

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I have become very critical of the whole book award system and could preach on that subject for quite a while, but…

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“The natural, proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold…

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You know, I don't think a lot about why one book connects with its readers and another doesn't. Probably because I don't…

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A dangerous book will always be in danger from those it threatens with the demand that they question their assumptions. They'd rather…

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While we read a novel, we are insane—bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren't there, we hear their voices...…

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We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an…

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After a long time spent learning how to write as a woman instead of as an honorary man, I was able to…

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If a book told you something when you were fifteen, it will tell you it again when you're fifty, though you may…

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The book itself is a curious artifact, not showy in its technology but complex and extremely efficient: a really neat little device,…

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If a book were written all in numbers, it would be true. It would be just. Nothing said in words ever came…

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“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…

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Meeting writers is always so disappointing. I got over wanting to meet live writers quite a long time ago. There is this…

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Well, we think that time "passes," flows past us, but what if it is we who move forward, from past to future,…

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As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing…

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“A book won't move your eyes for you like TV or a movie does. A book won't move your mind unless you…

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Whenever they tell me children want this sort of book and children need this sort of writing, I am going to smile…

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I have told the story I was asked to tell. I have closed it, as so many stories close, with a joining…

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“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

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“In its silence, a book is a challenge: it can't lull you with surging music or deafen you with screeching laugh tracks…

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More by Ursula K. Le Guin

“...I wore his blood for clothing, on my legs and thighs and hands: a dry, stiff, brown garment with no warmth in it.”

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Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it is like…

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“Aeneas' mother is a star?" "No; a goddess." I said cautiously, "Venus is the power that we invoke in spring, in the garden, when…

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“Meaning - this is perhaps the common note, the bane I am seeking. What is the Meaning of this book, this event in the…

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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…

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“. . . chronosophy does involve ethics. Because our sense of time involves our ability to separate cause and effect, means and end. The…

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“If both you and your plane are on time, the airport is merely a diffuse, short, miserable prelude to the intense, long, miserable plane…

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

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Between thought and spoken word is a gap where intention can enter, the symbol be twisted aside, and the lie come to be.

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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.

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“I did a lot today. That is, I did something. The only thing I have ever done. I pressed a button. It took the…

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To me the female principle is, or at least historically has been, basically anarchic. It values order without constraint, rule by custom not by…

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“Hector had no virtue?” “Of course he did. He won all his battles, till the last one.” “We all do,” Aeneas remarked.”

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“I was willing to believe him that most modern writing was trash, on the evidence that so much old writing was trash; but I…

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

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