More from Ursula K. Le Guin
The 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 GuinUrsula K. Le Guin It is very hard for evil to take hold of the unconsenting soul.
Ursula K. Le GuinUrsula K. Le Guin Even with the best intentions, language misused, language used stupidly, carelessly, brutally, language used wrongly, breeds lies, half-truths, confusion. In that sense you can say that grammar is morality. And it is in that sense that I say a writer’s first duty is to use language well.
Ursula K. Le GuinUrsula K. Le Guin To hear, one must be silent.
Ursula K. Le GuinUrsula K. Le Guin To see that your life is a story while you’re in the middle of living it may be a help to living it well.
Ursula K. Le GuinUrsula K. Le Guin 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 GuinUrsula K. Le Guin Take the tale in your teeth, then, and bite till the blood runs, hoping it’s not poison.
Ursula K. Le GuinUrsula K. Le Guin We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains.
Ursula K. Le GuinUrsula K. Le Guin What is life without incompatible realities?
Ursula K. Le GuinUrsula K. Le Guin 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 GuinUrsula K. Le Guin Reading is performance. The reader–the child under the blanket with a flashlight, the woman at the kitchen table, the man at the library desk–performs the work.
Ursula K. Le GuinUrsula K. Le Guin 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 GuinUrsula K. Le Guin I doubt that the imagination can be suppressed. If you truly eradicated it in a child, he would grow up to be an eggplant.
Ursula K. Le GuinUrsula K. Le Guin I believe that maturity is not an outgrowing, but a growing up: that an adult is not a dead child, but a child who survived.
Ursula K. Le GuinUrsula K. Le Guin We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel… is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.
Ursula K. Le GuinUrsula K. Le Guin f we can get feminine and human morality out from under the yoke of a dead ethic, then maybe we’ll begin to get somewhere on the road that leads to survival.
Ursula K. Le GuinUrsula K. Le Guin
Original quotes
From our community writers
How strange that our hearts heal from the same thing that broke it -love.
Cailin HargreavesCailin Hargreaves The peak of intensity is numbness not emotionless.
Anamika GargAnamika Garg She is everything and nothing at all.
Ava NicoleAva Nicole She built her castle at rock bottom.
Harriet SelinaHarriet Selina Keep growing into yourself.
Sophia JoanSophia Joan They tell you to be grateful for what you have. But you are also allowed to be sad for what you have lost.
Sabina LauraSabina Laura what the sky is to a bird is like a dream for a dreamer.
Safna SulaimanSafna Sulaiman The Red Rose on my grave shows once I was in love.
Moses AlexanderMoses Alexander
Meet the writers
More on slow
Think with awe on the slow and quiet power of time.
Friedrich SchillerFriedrich Schiller Justice, even if slow, is sure.
SolonSolon The future comes slowly, the present flies and the past stands still forever.
Friedrich SchillerFriedrich Schiller The church has historically been very slow to embrace technology. Until very recently, their idea of a laptop was an altar boy.
Bill MaherBill Maher I know where I’m going musically. I can see my pattern and I’m going much slower than I thought I’d be going.
Jimmy PageJimmy Page I got a lot of paradoxes in my life. I guess I’m a real confused person, but there are some focused parts to my life now, and I’m slowly trying to put all the pieces back together.
Stevie Ray VaughanStevie Ray Vaughan I could have knocked him out in the 3rd round but I wanted to do it slowly, So he would remember this night for a long time.
Mike TysonMike Tyson If an asteroid is coming toward you, you don’t have to blow it up. You just have to slow it down long enough for our country to rotate out of the way.
Emo PhilipsEmo Philips