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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

As a kitten does what all other kittens do, so a child wants to do what other children do, with a wanting that is as powerful as it is mindless. Since we human beings have to learn what we do, we have to start out that way, but human mindfulness begins where that wish to be the same leaves off.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Child Children Do Kitten Mindless Other Powerful Want
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.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Anybody Anything Hardly Introvert Rule Write
A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it… By using words well they strengthen their souls.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Care Mena Say Soul Strengthen Use Well Word Writer
The performance is silent. The readers hear the sounds of the words and the beat of the sentences only in their inner ear. Silent drummers on noiseless drums. An amazing performance in an amazing theater.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Amazing Drummer Ebit Noiseless Performance Raeder Sentence Silent Theatre
We read books to find out who we are.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Book Find Out Read
What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Crazy Live Person Sane World
The creative adult is the child who has survived.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Child Creative Adult Survive
Life–evolution–the whole universe of space/time, matter/energy–existence itself–is essentially change.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Energy Evolution Existence Itself Life Matter Time Whole
To hear, one must be silent.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Hear Must One Silent
A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Care Mean Person Say Winter Word
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.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Book Children Good Perfectly Well Real True Unicorn
As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing a Bach suite participates, note by note, in the creation, the coming-to-be, the existence, of the music.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Bach Book Creation Note Page Participate Play Read Select Suite Word
You will die. You will not live forever. Nor will any man nor any thing. Nothing is immortal. But only to us is it given to know that we must die. And that is a great gift: the gift of selfhood. For we have only what we know we must lose, what we are willing to lose…
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Any Die Forever Given Immortal Live Man Nothing Thing
All of us have to learn how to invent our lives , make them up, imagine them.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Imagine Invest Learn Live Make
Grieving, like being blind, is a strange business; you have to learn how to do it. We seek company in mourning, but after the early bursts of tears, after the praises have been spoken, and the good days remembered, and the lament cried, and the grave closed, there is no company in grief. It is a burden borne alone.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Being Blind Business Grieving Learn Strange
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

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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