black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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 Guin

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
Once you have seen the larger pattern, you cannot go back to seeing the part as the whole.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Back Large Once Pattern See Sen Whole
Only in silence the word, only in dark the light, only in dying life: bright the hawk’s flight on the empty sky.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Bright Die Empty Hawk Light Only Silence Sky Word
The creative adult is the child who has survived.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Child Creative Adult Survive
Odonianism is anarchism. Not the bomb-in-the-pocket stuff, which is terrorism, whatever name it tries to dignify itself with, not the social-Darwinist economic ‘libertarianism’ of the far right; but anarchism, as prefigured in early.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Anarchism Bomb Darwinist Economic Itself Liberal Name Odonianism Pocket Social Stuff Terrorism Tries
You sit down and you do it, and you do it, and you do it, until you have learned to do it.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Down Learn Sit Until
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
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
The question is always the same with a dragon: will he talk with you or will he eat you?
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Always Dragon Eat Question Same Talk Will
Civilized 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 GUIN

Civilize Man Master Other Outside Rest Self Subservient Underneath
Injustice makes the rules, and courage breaks them.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Awake Courahege Injustice Make Rule
Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Art Being Change Human Poet Resist Word
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 GUIN

Best Breed Careless Grammarly Language Morality Stupidity Truth Writer
Success is somebody else’s failure.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Else Failure Somebody Success
If a book told you something when you were fifteen, it will tell you it again when you’re fifty, though you may understand it so differently that it seems you’re reading a whole new book.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Again Book Differently Fifteen Fifty Raed Seem Something Tell Understand
You have made it into a thing, to which the only possible relationship is a power relationship. And thus you have fatally impoverished your own reality.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Impronenish Made Possible Reality Relationship Thing

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes