The dance is always danced above the hollow place, above the terrible abyss.
URSULA K. LE GUINThe dance is always danced above the hollow place, above the terrible abyss.
URSULA K. LE GUINYou 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 GUINWe’re each of us alone, to be sure. What can you do but hold your hand out in the dark?
URSULA K. LE GUINThere are no right answers to wrong questions.
URSULA K. LE GUINCivilized Man says: I am Self, I am Master, all the rest is other–outside, below, underneath, subservient. I own, I use, I explore, I exploit, I control. What I do is what matters. What I want is what matter is for. I am that I am, and the rest is women & wilderness, to be used as I see fit.
URSULA K. LE GUINAs great scientists have said and as all children know, it is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception, and compassion, and hope.
URSULA K. LE GUINThe book is all there, all at once, between its covers. But if you want to read the story and understand it, you must begin with the first page, and go forward, always in order. So the universe would be a very great book, and we would be very small readers.
URSULA K. LE GUINA wrong that cannot be repaired must be transcended.
URSULA K. LE GUINThe 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 GUINThe presence of the trees was very strong…The big oaks stood so many, so massive in their other life, in their deep, rooted silence: the awe of them came on me, the religion.
URSULA K. LE GUINTo hear, one must be silent.
URSULA K. LE GUINIf 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 GUINTo be oneself is a rare thing, and a great one.
URSULA K. LE GUINOnly 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 GUINThere have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.
URSULA K. LE GUINAnd, as you read and re-read, the book of course participates in the creation of you, your thoughts and feelings, the size and temper of your soul.
URSULA K. LE GUIN