American author (1929- )
To which Silence of course made no reply, letting him hear what he had said and feel its foolishness thoroughly.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Tales from Earthsea
Violence gains nothing, killing wins nothing -- only sometimes nothing is what people want. Death is what they want. And they get it.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
"The Eye of the Heron"
To leave the reader free to decide what your work means, that's the real art; it makes the work inexhaustible.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Guardian, December 17, 2005
For a fiction writer, a storyteller, the world is full of stories, and when a story is there, it's there, and you just reach up and pick it.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination
Morality is an utterly meaningless term unless defined as the good one does to others, the fulfilling of one's function in the sociopolitical whole.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Lathe of Heaven
Living, being in the world, was a much greater and stranger thing than she had ever dreamed.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Tombs of Atuan
The danger in trying to do good is that the mind comes to confuse the intent of goodness with the act of doing things well.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Tales from Earthsea
To claim power over what you do not understand is not wise, nor is the end of it likely to be good.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Farthest Shore
Darkness is only in the mortal eye, that thinks it sees, but sees not.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Left Hand of Darkness
There are very real differences between science fiction and realistic fiction, between horror and fantasy, between romance and mystery. Differences in writing them, in reading them, in criticizing them. Vive les différences! They're what gives each genre its singular flavor and savor, its particular interest for the reader--and the writer.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
interview, Electric Lit, August 7, 2014
When I was young, I had to choose between the life of being and the life of doing. And I leapt at the latter like a trout to a fly. But each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act again and yet again. Then very seldom do you come upon a space, a time like this, between act and act, when you may stop and simply be. or wonder who, after all, you are.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Farthest Shore
It's a rare gift, to know where you need to be, before you've been to all the places you don't need to be.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Tales from Earthsea
Greed puts out the sun.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Other Wind
Truth, as ever, avoids the stranger.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
City of Illusions
I'm not a quester or a searcher for the truth. I don't really think there is one answer, so I never went looking for it. My impulse is less questing and more playful. I like trying on ideas and ways of life and religious approaches. I'm just not a good candidate for conversion.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
interview, The Paris Review, fall 2013
Realism is a very sophisticated form of literature, a very grown-up one. And that may be its weakness. But fantasy seems to be eternal and omnipresent and always attractive to kids.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
interview, The Paris Review, fall 2013
Revolution is our obligation: our hope of evolution.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Dispossessed
People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Wave in the Mind: Talks & Essays on the Writer, the Reader, & the Imagination
The more defensive a society, the more conformist.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
City of Illusions
It's not a weapon or a woman can make a man, or magery either, or any power, anything but himself.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Tehanu