“A lot of people still maintain genre prejudice. I still meet matrons who tell me kindly that their children enjoyed my books… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Whenever they tell me children want this sort of book and children need this sort of writing, I am going to smile… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“On the planet O there has not been a war for five thousand years, she read, and on Gethen there has never… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
I don't write tracts, I write novels. I'm not a preacher, I'm a fiction writer. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
I get a lot of moral guidance from reading novels, so I guess I expect my novels to offer some moral guidance,… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
... the habit of literature [is] the best defense against believing the half-truths of ideologues and the lies of demagogues. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“Back then, in 1967, wizards were all, more or less, Merlin and Gandalf. Old men, peaked hats, white beards. But this was… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
I have become very critical of the whole book award system and could preach on that subject for quite a while, but… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“Art is not a horse race. Literature is not the Olympics. The hell with The Great American Novel. We have all the… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“I write science fiction because that is what publishers call my books. Left to myself, I should call them novels.” — 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 a book were written all in numbers, it would be true. It would be just. Nothing said in words ever came… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“THINKING about Homer, and it occurred to me that his two books are the two basic fantasy stories: the War and the… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“A book won't move your eyes for you like TV or a movie does. A book won't move your mind unless you… — 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