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Success is somebody else’s failure.

Ursula K. Le Guin

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
We need to be taught these skills; we need guides to show us how. If we don’t, our lives get made up for us by other people .
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Guide Made People Show Skill Taught
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
The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel. The rabbit shrieks dying in the green meadows.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Beautiful Bright Dark Druel Earth Existence Terrible
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
But it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Another Dragon Meet One Read Thing
You 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 GUIN

Build City Country Dictator Explore Map Obedient Populace Rule
Capitalism’s grow-or-die imperative stands radically at odds with ecology’s imperative of interdependence and limit.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Capitalism Die Growth Imperative Interdependence Limit Odd Radical Stand
I think,” Tehanu said in her soft, strange voice, “that when I die, I can breathe back the breath that made me live.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Back Breath Live Made Said Soft Strange Think Voice
The important thing is not the finding, it is the seeking, it is the devotion with which one spins the wheel of prayer and scripture, discovering the truth little by little.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Devotion Discover Find Important Little Thing
The two imperatives can no longer coexist with each other; nor can any society founded on the myth that they can be reconciled hope to survive.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Coexist Each Found Hope Imperative Longer Myth Other Reconcile Silence Society
Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Country Dark Earth Root
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
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 GUIN

Adult Believe Child Dead Maturity Outgrowing Survive
The story is not in the plot but in the telling.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Plot Story Tell
I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Alternative Come Fear Hard See Society Stricken Think Through Time Voice Want Will Writer

Success is somebody else’s failure.

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Success is somebody else’s failure.

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