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
There are dance artists, painting artists and writing artists. Authors are writing artists. You can practice art in whatever medium you choose,… — 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
Meeting writers is always so disappointing. I got over wanting to meet live writers quite a long time ago. There is this… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
When we're done with it, we may find—if it's a good novel—that we're a bit different from what we were before we… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Well, we think that time "passes," flows past us, but what if it is we who move forward, from past to future,… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“Critics and academics have been trying for forty years to bury the greatest work of imaginative fiction in English. They ignore it,… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“The natural, proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold… — 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
“KEEP READING books and seeing movies where nobody can fucking say anything except fuck, unless they say shit.” — 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
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
“I go on writing in both respectable and despised genres because I respect them all, rejoice in their differences, and reject only… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“...[T]he only means I have to stop ignorant snobs from behaving towards genre fiction with snobbish ignorance is to not reinforce their… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
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… — 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
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
Sometimes one's very angry and preaches, but I know that to clinch a point is to close it. To leave the reader… — 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
The reason literacy is important is that literature is the operating instructions. The best manual we have. The most useful guide to… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Fake realism is the escapist literature of our time. And probably the ultimate escapist reading is that masterpiece of total unreality, the… — 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
“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 Copy Share Image
“In fact, while we read a novel, we are insane – bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren’t there,… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Fantasy is a literature particularly useful for embodying and examining the real difference between good and evil. In an America where our… — 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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
“. . . 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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
