“He had been trying to measure the distance between the earth and God.” — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“He thought of death, in that gap between the beginning of a step and its completion, and at the end of the… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
It is a real wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“Heaven and earth begin in the unnamed: name’s the mother of the ten thousand things.” — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
No society can change the nature of existence. We can't prevent suffering. This pain and that pain, yes, but not Pain. A… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
It is of the nature of idea to be communicated: written, spoken, done. The idea is like grass. It craves light, likes… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“assumed that if you removed a human being’s natural incentive to work—his initiative, his spontaneous creative energy—and replaced it with external motivation… — 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
“I know who I was, I can tell you who I may have been, but I am, now, only in this line… — 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
“...close up, a world's all dirt and rocks... The way to see how beautiful the earth is, is to see it as… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing -- instead of around,… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“It was not that Abbenay was short of power, not with her wind turbines and the earth temperature-differential generators used for heating;… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“This concern, feebly called 'love of nature', seemed to Shevek to be something much broader than love. There are souls, he thought,… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“This was a great magic. Festin had no more performed it than has any man who in exile or danger longs for… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“It's your nature to be Tirin, and my nature to be Shevek, and our common nature to be Odonians, responsible to one… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“So he worked. He lost weight; he walked light on the earth. Lack of physical labor, lack of variety of occupation, lack… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Civilized Man says: I am Self, I am Master, all the rest is other--outside, below, underneath, subservient. I own, I use, I… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Do you see, Arren, how an act is not, as young men think, like a rock that one picks up and throws,… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“Fantasy is nearer to poetry, to mysticism, and to insanity than naturalistic fiction is. It is a real wilderness, and those who… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
The backside of heroism is often rather sad; women and servants know that. They know also that the heroism may be no… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“The strange fortune of my lynx brought him to live in an artificial environment, a human community utterly foreign to him. His… — 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
