Lying is the misuse of language. We know that. We need to remember that it works the other way round too.
URSULA K. LE GUINEvery book purchase made from Amazon is a vote for a culture without content and without contentment.
More Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes
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There are no right answers to wrong questions.
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A writer either speaks to adults and bores kids, or speaks to kids and upsets adults.
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You can’t crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them. By refusing to think, refusing to change.
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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.
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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.
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The only questions that really matter are the ones you ask yourself.
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Take the tale in your teeth, then, and bite till the blood runs, hoping it’s not poison.
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But it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them.
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While we read a novel, we are insane-bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren’t there, we hear their voices… Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.
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We will not know our own injustice if we cannot imagine justice. We will not be free if we do not imagine freedom.
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Capitalism’s grow-or-die imperative stands radically at odds with ecology’s imperative of interdependence and limit.
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A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it… By using words well they strengthen their souls.
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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.
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The mountains clench their great hands full of hidden fire. There are sharks in the sea, and there is cruelty in men’s eyes.
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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.
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The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.
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The delight of the nursing mother, of the scholar, of the successful hunter, of the good cook, of the skilful maker, of anyone doing needed work and doing it well, – this durable joy is perhaps the deepest source of human affection and of sociality as a whole.
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Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country.
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Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I’m going to go fulfill my proper function in the social organism. I’m going to unbuild walls.
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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.
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The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means.
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To be oneself is a rare thing, and a great one.
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Things don’t have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What’s the function of a galaxy?
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And though I came to forget or regret all I have ever done, yet would I remember that once I saw the dragons aloft on the wind at sunset above the western isles; and I would be content.
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By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.
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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.
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