Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes
The living tongue that tells the word, the living ear that hears it, bind and bond us in the communion we long for in the silence of our inner solitude.
Much arrogance is necessary equipment for an artist, I think. Not sufficient, but necessary. It carries one across the gaps.
The historic function of a Senator from Oregon is to drive all the other Senators mad.
My great-aunt. . . . said nobody under 18 had any business reading Dickens. . . . She was right.
Love's just one of the ways through, and it can go wrong, and miss. Pain never misses. But therefore we don't have much choice about enduring it! We will, whether we want to or not.
When in the Land of Property think like a propertarian. Dress like one, eat like one, act like one, be one.
A story rises from the springs of creation, from the pure will to be; it tells itself; I takes its own course, finds its own way, its own words; and the writer's job is to be its medium.
Gradually the healing took place, seeming as it always does that it wasn't taking place.
A scientist can pretend that his work isn't himself, it's merely the impersonal truth. An artist can't hide behind the truth. He can't hide anywhere.
Death and life are the same thing-like the two sides of my hand, the palm and the back. And still the palm and the back are not the same...They can be neither separated, nor mixed.
To learn a belief without the belief is to sing a song without the tune.
The artist deals with what cannot be said in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.
But need alone is not enough to set power free: there must be knowledge.
The airport bookstore did not sell books, only bestsellers, which Sita Dulip cannot read without risking a severe systemic reaction.
The individual cannot bargain with the State. The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coins itself.
If one believes that words are acts, as I do, then one must hold writers responsible for what their words do.
A forest ecology is a delicate one. If the forest perishes, its fauna may go with it. The Athshean word for world is also the word for forest.
George, it's impossible to correct a defective reality-orientation overnight.
Stories are what death thinks he puts an end to. He can't understand that they end in him, but they don't end with him.
Nothing said in words ever came out quite even. Things in words got twisted and ran together, instead of staying straight and fitting together.
Other people's stories may become part of your own, the foundation of it, the ground it goes on.
Oh, never and forever aren't for mortals, love. But we won't be parted till I know it's right that we part.
Dead anarchists make martyrs, you know, and keep living for centuries. But absent ones can be forgotten.
A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it... By using words well they strengthen their souls.
A dangerous book will always be in danger from those it threatens with the demand that they question their assumptions. They'd rather hang on to the assumptions and ban the book.