black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

But it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them.

Ursula 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 GUIN

Book Essential Feel Find Guide Imaginary Ourselves Out People Real Think Understanding
For all their restlessness, men are who they are; once they put on the man’s toga they will not change again; so they make a virtue of that rigidity and resist whatever might soften it and set them free.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Again Change Free Man Resist Restless Rigidly Soften Virtue
Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it is like anything else.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Anything Art Else Entirely Fell Increasingly Itself Mysterious Translate Translation Writing
Light is the left hand of darkness and darkness the right hand of light. Two are one, life and death, lying together like lovers in kemmer, like hands joined together, like the end and the way.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Darkness Death Hand Join Left Life Light Lover Lying Right Together Two
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
When you light a candle, you also cast a shadow.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Candle Cast Light Shadow
Success is somebody else’s failure.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Else Failure Somebody Success
I believe that all the best faculties of a mature human being exist in the child. . . that one of the most deeply human, and humane, of these faculties is the power of imagination.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Being Believe Child Exist Faculties Human Imagination Mature Power
What goes too long unchanged destroys itself.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Destroy Goes Itself Long Too Unchanged
If you evade suffering you also evade the chance of joy. Pleasure you may get, or pleasures, but you will not be fulfilled. You will not know what it is to come home.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Chance Come Evade Fulfill Home Joy May Pleasure Suffer
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
This is. And thou art. There is no safety. There is no end. The word must be heard in silence. There must be darkness to see the stars.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Art Darkness End Must Must Heard Safety Silence Star
Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art – the art of words.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Art Being Often Resistance Change Word
There are no right answers to wrong questions.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Answer Question Right Wrong
Besides, when you say you’re a feminist it annoys the bigots and the old farts and the prissy ladies so much, it’s kind of irresistible.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Annoy Besides Bigot Demist Fant Irresistible Kind Ladies Musch Old Prissy Say
The light is the left hand of darkness.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Darkness Hanf Left Light

But it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

But it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes