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I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope.

Ursula K. Le Guin

You are in the country where you make up the rules, the laws. You are both dictator and obedient populace. It is a country nobody has ever explored before. It is up to you to make the maps, to build the cities.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Build City Country Dictator Explore Map Obedient Populace Rule
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
The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Bad Consider Encouragement Habit Happiness Pedant Sophisticate Stupid Trouble
The question is always the same with a dragon: will he talk with you or will he eat you?
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Always Dragon Eat Question Same Talk Will
The light is the left hand of darkness.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Darkness Hanf Left Light
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
By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Brighter Deeper Reader Skill Soul Spend Story Teller Strength Well Word
We’re each of us alone, to be sure. What can you do but hold your hand out in the dark?
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Alone Dark Each Hand Hold Out Sure
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?
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Function Galaxy Machine Purpose Thing Universe Useful
If it were proven that there is no God there would be no religion. …But also if it were proven that there is a God, there would be no religion.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

God No Proven Religion
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

Claim End Good Likely Over Power Understand Wise
The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Balck Mark Pulp Story Unread Word
The world is in balance . To light a candle is to cast a shadow.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Balance Candle Cast Light Shadow World
What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Crazy Live Person Sane World
Odonianism is anarchism. Not the bomb-in-the-pocket stuff, which is terrorism, whatever name it tries to dignify itself with, not the social-Darwinist economic ‘libertarianism’ of the far right; but anarchism, as prefigured in early.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Anarchism Bomb Darwinist Economic Itself Liberal Name Odonianism Pocket Social Stuff Terrorism Tries
The story is not in the plot but in the telling.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Plot Story Tell
I do not care what comes after; I have seen the dragons on the wind of morning.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

After Care Come Dragon Morning Seen Wind
Men call women faithless, changeable, and though they say it in jealousy of their own ever-threatened sexual honor, there is some truth in it.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Call Chnagebale Ever Faithless Honor Jealous Men Sexual Some Threatened Through Truth Women
Fantasy is not antirational, but pararational; not realistic but surrealistic, a heightening of reality. In Freud’s terminology, it employs primary not secondary process thinking. It employs archetypes which, as Jung warned us, are dangerous things.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Fantasy Height Realistic Reality Surrealistic Traditional
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
Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Artist Banality Evil Intellectual Interest Pain Refusal Terrible Treason
The only questions that really matter are the ones you ask yourself.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Ask Matter One Only Question Really Yourself
as a writer you are free. You are about the freest person that ever was. Your freedom is what you have bought with your solitude, your loneliness.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Bought Free Freedom Fresh Loneliness Solitude Writer
I can give back to the world all that I didn’t do. All that I might have been and couldn’t be. All the choices I didn’t make. All the things I lost and spent and wasted. I can give them back to the world.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Back Choice Give Lost Thing Waste World
The mountains clench their great hands full of hidden fire. There are sharks in the sea, and there is cruelty in men’s eyes.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Clench Cruelty Dull Eye Fire Great Hand Hidden Men Mountain Sea Shark
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

Change Come Confuse Good Goodness Intent Thing Try Well
Music is another way of thinking, or maybe thinking is another kind of music.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Another Kind Music Think Way

I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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