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Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Every group we belong to – by gender, sex, race, religion, age – is an in-group, surrounded by an immense out-group, living next door and all over the world, who will be alive as far into the future as humanity has a future. That out-group is called other people. It is for them that we write.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Age Future Gender Group Humanity Immense Next People Race Religion Surrounded World
But it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Another Dragon Meet One Read Thing
The two imperatives can no longer coexist with each other; nor can any society founded on the myth that they can be reconciled hope to survive.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Coexist Each Found Hope Imperative Longer Myth Other Reconcile Silence Society
You have made it into a thing, to which the only possible relationship is a power relationship. And thus you have fatally impoverished your own reality.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Impronenish Made Possible Reality Relationship Thing
We are been taught to be ashamed of not being ‘outgoing’. But a writer’s job is ingoing.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Ashamed Been Job Outgoing Taught Winter
If you deny any affinity with another person or kind of person, if you declare it to be wholly different from yourself.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Affinity Another Declare Deny Different Person Yourself
What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Crazy Live Person Sane World
But where I can get prickly and combative is, if I’m just called a sci-fi writer. I’m not. I’m a novelist and poet. Don’t shove me into your damn pigeonhole, where I don’t fit, because I’m all over.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Call Damm Novelist Over Pigeon Poet Prickly Writer
I believe that maturity is not an outgrowing, but a growing up: that an adult is not a dead child, but a child who survived.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Adult Believe Child Dead Maturity Outgrowing Survive
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

All Before Know Need Place Rare
That selfhood which is our torment, and our treasure, and our humanity, does not endure. It changes; it is gone, a wave on the sea. Would you have the sea grow still and the tides cease, to save one wave, to save yourself?
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Endure Glow Gone Save Sea Selfhood Treasure Yourself
There is no information about corporations. There is only disinformation.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Corporation Disinformation Information Only
The creative adult is the child who has survived.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Child Creative Adult Survive
There’s a point, around the age of twenty, when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Age Around Choose Else Everybody Joint Life Make Rest Virtue Whether
Lying is the misuse of language. We know that. We need to remember that it works the other way round too.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Know Language Lie Misuse Need Remember Round
There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Great Societies Society Story Use Wheel

Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one.

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Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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