“Hector had no virtue?” “Of course he did. He won all his battles, till the last one.” “We all do,” Aeneas remarked.” — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Even the best weapon is an unhappy tool, hateful to living things. So the follower of the Way stays away from it.… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“If we insist that in the real world the ultimate victor must be the good guy, we’ve sacrificed right to might. (That’s… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
I know that nobody who hasn't been in battle or under attack can know what war is. But even in terms of… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
...fiction is made out of the writer's experience, his whole life from infancy on, everything he's thought and done and seen and… — 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
“But I guess I can't, or my subconscious can't, even imagine a warless world. The best it can do is substitute one… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Growing up during World War II certainly affected my whole view of life, but I hardly know how, it goes so deep.… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“Of course there is no veneer, the process is one of growth, and primitiveness and civilization are degrees of the same thing.… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
I always wondered why the makers leave housekeeping and cooking out of their tales. Isn't it what all the great wars and… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“I always wondered why the makers leave housekeeping and cooking out of their tales. Isn't it what all the great wars and… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“War as a moral metaphor is limited, limiting, and dangerous. By reducing the choices of action to “a war against” whatever-it-is, you… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“My mother was mad, but I was not. My father was old, but I was young. Like Spartan Helen, I caused a… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“Why must there be war?" "Oh Lavinia, what a woman's question that is! Because men are men.” — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“My species has a great many good reasons for making war, though none of them is as good as the reason for… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“Do the people in this country approve of this war?" [...]. "Approve? You don't think we'd lie down and let the damned… — 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
“For heroes do not make history—that is the historian’s job—but, passive, let themselves be borne along, swept up to the crest of… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Without war there are no heroes. What harm would that be? Oh, Lavinia, what a woman's question that is. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“The elimination of war. Did the Ancient Hainish postulate that continuous sexual capacity and organized social aggression, neither of which are attributes… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“The Trojan war is not and you cannot make it be the War of Good vs. Evil. It’s just a war, a… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“In fact, while we read a novel, we are insane – bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren’t there,… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Fantasy is a literature particularly useful for embodying and examining the real difference between good and evil. In an America where our… — 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
