URSULA K. LE GUIN QUOTES V

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

Tags: silence


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

Tags: art


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

Tags: morality


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

Tags: power


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

Tags: action


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

Tags: greed


Truth, as ever, avoids the stranger.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

City of Illusions

Tags: truth


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

Tags: religion


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

Tags: realism


Revolution is our obligation: our hope of evolution.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

The Dispossessed

Tags: revolution


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

Tags: dragons


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