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
In innocence there is no strength against evil, said Sparrowhawk, a little wryly. But there is strength in it for good. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Little mirrors were attached to the front of their cars, at which they glanced to see where they had been; then they… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
The important thing is not the finding, it is the seeking, it is the devotion with which one spins the wheel of… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
What you love, you will love. What you undertake you will complete. You are a fulfiller of hope; you are to be… — 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
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
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
We of Es Toch tell a little myth, which says that in the beginning the Creator told a great lie. For there… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Animals do neither good nor evil. They do as they must do.We may call what they do harmful or useful, but good… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
I have told the story I was asked to tell. I have closed it, as so many stories close, with a joining… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
In many college English courses the words “myth” and “symbol” are given a tremendous charge of significance. You just ain’t no good… — 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