We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings.
URSULA K. LE GUINResistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art – the art of words.
More Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes
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A writer either speaks to adults and bores kids, or speaks to kids and upsets adults.
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The light is the left hand of darkness.
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The delight of the nursing mother, of the scholar, of the successful hunter, of the good cook, of the skilful maker, of anyone doing needed work and doing it well, – this durable joy is perhaps the deepest source of human affection and of sociality as a whole.
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The world is in balance . To light a candle is to cast a shadow.
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Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it is like anything else.
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This is. And thou art. There is no safety. There is no end. The word must be heard in silence. There must be darkness to see the stars.
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Hardly anybody ever writes anything nice about introverts. Extroverts rule. This is rather odd when you realise that about nineteen writers out of twenty are introverts.
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Take the tale in your teeth, then, and bite till the blood runs, hoping it’s not poison.
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Fantasy is nearer to poetry, to mysticism, and to insanity than naturalistic fiction is. It is a wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe.
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If you evade suffering you also evade the chance of joy. Pleasure you may get, or pleasures, but you will not be fulfilled. You will not know what it is to come home.
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Children know perfectly well that unicorns aren’t real, but they also know that books about unicorns, if they are good books, are true books.
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A child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of economic competition will grow up with the will to do what needs doing and the capacity for joy in doing it. It is useless work that darkens the heart.
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To the lives that haven’t been lived yet. That will be my gift back to the world that gave me the life I did live, the love I loved, the breath I breathed.
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Things don’t have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What’s the function of a galaxy?
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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