Things don't have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What's the function of… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
If I had to pick a hero, it would be Charles Darwin--the size of his mind, which included all that scientific curiosity… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
It did not matter, after all. He was only one man. One man's fate is not important. "If it is not, what… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
If you want to know all about the sea ... and ask the sea itself, what does it say? Grumble grumble swish… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Genre fiction was looked at as a ghetto, but I wonder now if realist fiction, sealing itself off in the glum suburbs… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
If you're a fiction writer, though, I can tell you how to let people talk through you. Listen. Just be quiet, and… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
If you deny any affinity with another person or kind of person, if you declare it to be wholly different from yourself… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
We will not know our own injustice if we cannot imagine justice. We will not be free if we do not imagine… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Sci-fi uses the images that sf - starting with H.G. Wells - made familiar: space travel, aliens, galactic wars and federations, time… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Life goes on, even if two-headed and glowing faintly in the dark. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
If we can get that realistic feminine morality working for us, if we can trust ourselves and so let women think and… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Science fiction - and the correct shortcut is 'sf' - uses actual scientific facts or theories for the source ideas or framework… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
I don’t think ‘science fiction’ is a very good name for it, but it’s the name that we’ve got. It is different… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
A panda walks into a tea room and ordered a salad and ate it. Then it pulled out a pistol, shot the… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
If civilization has an opposite, it is war. Of these two things, you have either one, or the other. Not both. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
If success in selling is my primary interest, I am not primarily a writer, but a salesperson. If I teach success in… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
It's probably simply a matter of temperament that I never stopped to wonder if I could "match" what I had done, never… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
What is a body that casts no shadow? Nothing, a formlessness, two-dimensional, a comic-strip character. If I deny my own profound relationship… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Public speaking is done in the public tongue, the national or tribal language; and the language of our tribe is the men's… — 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
All of us have to learn how to invent our lives , make them up, imagine them. We need to be taught… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
When the enemy enthusiastically embraces you, and the fellow countrymen bitterly reject you, it is hard not to wonder if you are,… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
A man who doesn't detest a bad government is a fool. And if there were such a thing as a good government… — 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