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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

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.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Back Breathed Gift Live Love Loved Yet
The misogyny that shapes every aspect of our civilization is the institutionalized form of male fear and hatred of what they have denied and therefore cannot know, cannot share: that wild country, the being of women.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Aspect Civilization Denied Fear Form Institutionalize Know Male Misogyny Shape
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
Those who build walls are their own prisoners.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Build Own Prisoner Wall
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
The story is not in the plot but in the telling.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Plot Story Tell
The light is the left hand of darkness.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Darkness Hanf Left Light
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
We cannot demand that anyone try to attain justice and freedom who has not had a chance to imagine them as attainable.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Anyone Attain Attainable Chance Demand Freedom Imagine Justice
It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

End Good Journey Matters Towards
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.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Burson Capacity Child Competition Do Doing Economic Free Grow Guilt Joy Need Ownership Will
The dance is always danced above the hollow place, above the terrible abyss.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Above Abyss Always Dance Hollow Place Terrible
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
But it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Another Dragon Meet One Read Thing
It doesn’t have to be plugged in, activated, or performed by a machine; all it needs is light, a human eye, and a human mind. It is not one of a kind, and it is not ephemeral. It lasts. It is reliable.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Activate Eye Human Last Light Machine Need One Perform Plug Reliable
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

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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