“Oh, Hank," Susan whispered, "their wings are furry." "Oh, James," Harriet whispered, "their hands are kind.” — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“Let age be age. Let your old relative or old friend be who they are. Denial serves nothing, no one, no purpose.” — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“In trouble and from darkness you come, Ged, yet your coming is joy to me.” — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“I expect it will turn out that sexual intercourse is possible between Gethenian double-sexed and Hainish-norm one-sexed human beings, though such intercourse… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“I wondered, not for the first time, what patriotism is, what the love of country truly consists of, how that yearning loyalty… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“A friend. What is a friend, in a world where any friend may be a lover at a new phase of the… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“I think what you mostly do when you find you really are alone is to panic. You rush to the opposite extreme and pack yourself into groups - clubs, teams, societies, types. You suddenly start dressing exactly like the others. It's a way of being invisible. The way you sew the patches on the holes in your blue jeans becomes… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
“For it seemed to me, and I think to him, that it was from that sexual tension between us, admitted now and… — 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 things begin growing. And we call the evening star Venus." He thought it over. Perhaps having grown up in the country, among pagans like me, helped him understand my bewilderment. "So do we, he said. "But… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
“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 why many of them are afraid of fantasy. They know that its truth challenges, even threatens, all that is false, all that is phony, unnecessary, and trivial in the life they have let themselves be forced… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
“. . . chronosophy does involve ethics. Because our sense of time involves our ability to separate cause and effect, means and end. The baby, again, the animal, they don't see the difference between what they do now and what will happen because of it. They can't make a pulley, or a promise. We can. Seeing the difference between now… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
“If both you and your plane are on time, the airport is merely a diffuse, short, miserable prelude to the intense, long, miserable plane trip. But what if there's five hours between your arrival and your connecting flight, or your plane is late arriving and you've missed your connection, or the connecting flight is late, or the staff of another… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
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