I don't write tracts, I write novels. I'm not a preacher, I'm a fiction writer. Ursula K. Le Guin More Quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin More Quotes From Ursula K. Le Guin That I was not dueling with the king, but trying to communicate with him, was itself an incommunicable fact. Ursula K. Le Guin dueling kings trying I'll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination. Ursula K. Le Guin imagination stories children Animals do neither good nor evil. They do as they must do.We may call what they do harmful or useful, but good and evil belong to us, who chose to choose what we do. [. . .] The animals need only be and do.We're yoked, and they're free. So to be with an animal is to know a little freedom. Ursula K. Le Guin evil animal needs She had always known that all lives are in common, rejoicing in her kinship to the fish in the tanks of her laboratories, seeking the experience of existences outside the human boundary. Ursula K. Le Guin tanks common animal The literature of the emperor penguin is as forbidding, as inaccessible, as the frozen heart of Antarctica itself. Its beauties may be unearthly, but they are not for us. Ursula K. Le Guin frozen heart animal When I'm writing I don't dream much; it's like the dreaming gets used in the writing. Ursula K. Le Guin used dream writing There is a limited number of plots. There is no limit to the number of stories. Ursula K. Le Guin plot limits numbers My Real Children starts quietly, then suddenly takes you on two roller-coaster rides at once, swooping dizzily through a double panorama and ending in a sort of super Sophie's Choice. A daring tour de force. Ursula K. Le Guin real two children ...If at moments the facts seem to alter with an altered voice, why then you can choose the fact you like best; yet none of them are false, and it is all one story. Ursula K. Le Guin voice stories facts there are times when you have to speak because silence is betrayal. Ursula K. Le Guin betrayal silence speak If you want to know all about the sea ... and ask the sea itself, what does it say? Grumble grumble swish swish. It is too busy being itself to know anything about itself. Ursula K. Le Guin sea doe want Science fiction properly conceived, like all serious fiction, however funny, is a way of trying to describe what is in fact going on, what people actually do and feel, how people relate to everything else in this vast sack, this belly of the universe, this womb of things to be and tomb of things that were, this unending story. Ursula K. Le Guin trying people way Any artist must expect to work amid the total, rational indifference of everybody else to their work, for years, perhaps for life. Ursula K. Le Guin indifference artist years Certainly the effort to remain unchanged, young, when the body gives so impressive a signal of change as the menopause, is gallant; but it is a stupid, self-sacrificial gallantry, better befitting a boy of twenty than a woman of forty-five or fifty. Let the athletes die young and laurel-crowned. Let the soldiers earn the Purple Hearts. Let women die old, white-crowned, with human hearts. Ursula K. Le Guin athlete stupid heart I think there is no way to write about being alone. To write is to tell something to somebody to communicate to others. . . . Solitude is noncommunication, the absence of others, the presence of a self sufficient to itself. Ursula K. Le Guin self writing thinking Writers are egotists. All artists are. They can’t be altruists and get their work done. And writers love to whine about the Solitude of the Author’s Life, and lock themselves into cork-lined rooms or droop around in bars in order to whine better. But although most writing is done in solitude, I believe that it is done, like all the arts, for an audience. That is to say, with an audience. All the arts are performance arts, only some of them are sneakier about it than others. Ursula K. Le Guin writing believe art There's seldom as much hurry as I used to think there was. Ursula K. Le Guin used thinking By such literalism, fundamentalism, religions betrayed the best intentions of their founders. Reducing thought to formula, replacing choice by obedience, these preachers turned the living word into dead law. Ursula K. Le Guin betrayed choices law It was men's ambitions, they said, that had perverted all the arts to ends of gain. Ursula K. Le Guin ambition men art There's no way to use power for good. Ursula K. Le Guin use way
