The machine conceals the machinations. Ursula K. Le Guin More Quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin More Quotes From Ursula K. Le Guin I have told the story I was asked to tell. I have closed it, as so many stories close, with a joining of two people. What is one man's and one woman's love and desire, against the history of two worlds, the great revolutions of our lifetimes, the hope, the unending cruelty of our species? A little thing. But a key is a little thing, next to the door it opens. If you lose the key, the door may never be unlocked. It is in our bodies that we lose or begin our freedom, in our bodies that we accept or end our slavery. So I wrote this book for my friend, with whom I have lived and will die free. Ursula K. Le Guin doors men book The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. Ursula K. Le Guin pain stupid happiness Success is somebody else's failure. Ursula K. Le Guin A person who believes, as she did, that things fit: that there is a whole of which one is a part, and that in being a part one is whole: such a person has no desire whatever, at any time, to play God. Only those who have denied their being yearn to play at it. Ursula K. Le Guin play desire believe It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end. Ursula K. Le Guin motivational graduation inspirational Those who build walls are their own prisoners. Ursula K. Le Guin disapproval prisoner wall as a writer you are free. You are about the freest person that ever was. Your freedom is what you have bought with your solitude, your loneliness. 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. Nobody else in the world can do it, or ever could do it, or ever will be able to do it again. Ursula K. Le Guin loneliness law country In that moment Ged understood the singing of the bird, and the language of the water falling in the basin of the fountain, and the shape of the clouds, and the beginning and end of the wind that stirred the leaves; it seemed to him that he himself was a word spoken by the sunlight. Ursula K. Le Guin clouds wind fall When the enemy enthusiastically embraces you, and the fellow countrymen bitterly reject you, it is hard not to wonder if you are, in fact, a traitor. Ursula K. Le Guin rejects-you facts enemy To oppose something is to maintain it. Ursula K. Le Guin law-of-attraction To make a thief, make an owner; to create crime, create laws. Ursula K. Le Guin anarchy thieves law Science fiction is not prescriptive; it is descriptive. Ursula K. Le Guin science-fiction fiction The children of the revolution are always ungrateful, and the revolution must be grateful that it is so. Ursula K. Le Guin grateful revolution children If you see a whole thing - it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives... But up close a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. Ursula K. Le Guin wisdom beautiful jobs We like to think we live in daylight, but half the world is always dark, and fantasy, like poetry, speaks the language of the night. Ursula K. Le Guin dark night thinking When I was young, I had to choose between the life of being and the life of doing. And I leapt at the latter like a trout to a fly. But each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act again and yet again. Then very seldom do you come upon a space, a time like this, between act and act, when you may stop and simply be. Or wonder who, after all, you are. Ursula K. Le Guin trout space deeds My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world, and exiles me from it. Ursula K. Le Guin equality stupid inspirational Truth is a matter of the imagination. Ursula K. Le Guin truth-is imagination matter See, the thing is, as a writer you are free. You are about the freest person that ever was. Your freedom is what you have bought with your solitude, your loneliness. Ursula K. Le Guin solitude loneliness persons I think the mystery of art lies in this, that artists’ relationship is essentially with their work — not with power, not with profit, not with themselves, not even with their audience. Ursula K. Le Guin lying art thinking
