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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

First sentences are doors to worlds.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

First Sentence World
I certainly wasn’t happy. Happiness has to do with reason, and only reason earns it. What I was given was the thing you can’t earn, and can’t keep, and often don’t even recognize at the time; I mean joy.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Certainty Earn Happiness Happy Keep Often Reason Thing
Life goes on, even if two-headed and glowing faintly in the dark.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Dark Even Fainty Glow Goes Headed Life Two
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
Music is another way of thinking, or maybe thinking is another kind of music.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Another Kind Music Think Way
As men have done to women, and class has done to class, and nation has done to nation – you may hate it or deify it; but in either case you have denied its spiritual equality and its human reality.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Class Done Human Nation Reality Series Women
You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Buy Make Nowhere Revolution Spirit
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
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 GUIN

God No Proven Religion
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
You can’t crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them. By refusing to think, refusing to change.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Change Crush Idea Ignore Refuse Suppressing Think
We controlled neither appetite nor violence; we did not adapt. We destroyed ourselves. But we destroyed the world first.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Adapt Appetite Control Destroy Fast Ourselves Violence World
No darkness lasts forever. And even there, there are stars.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Darkness Forever Last Star
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
To have a choice at all is to be privileged.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Choose Privilege
The story is not in the plot but in the telling.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Plot Story Tell

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.

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Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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