To oppose something is to maintain it... You must go somewhere else; you must have another goal; then you walk a different road. Ursula K. Le Guin More Quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin More Quotes From Ursula K. Le Guin Oh, never and forever aren't for mortals, love. But we won't be parted till I know it's right that we part. Ursula K. Le Guin saying-goodbyeknowsforever What's needed in this case is conscious and serious practice in hearing, and using, and being used by, other people's voices. Ursula K. Le Guin voicepracticewriting Do remember, though, that unless you're a playwright, the result [dialogue] isn't what you want; it's only an element of what you want. Actors embody and re-create the words of drama. In fiction, a tremendous amount of story and character may be given through the dialogue, but the story-world and its people have to be created by the storyteller. If there's nothing in it but disembodied voices, too much is missing. Ursula K. Le Guin writingcharacterdrama A story rises from the springs of creation, from the pure will to be; it tells itself; I takes its own course, finds its own way, its own words; and the writer's job is to be its medium. Ursula K. Le Guin writingspringjobs Skill in writing frees you to write what you want to write. It may also show you what you want to write. Craft enables art. Ursula K. Le Guin skillswritingart Her concern with landscapes and living creatures was passionate. This concern, feebly called, "the love of nature" seemed to Shevek to be something much broader than love. There are souls, he thought, whose umbilicus has never been cut. They never got weaned from the universe. They do not understand death as an enemy; they look forward to rotting and turning into humus. It was strange to see Takver take a leaf into her hand, or even a rock. She became an extension of it, it of her. Ursula K. Le Guin rockscuttinghands Great self-destruction follows upon unfounded fear. Ursula K. Le Guin self-destructiondestructionself Compare the torrent and the glacier. Both get where they are going. Ursula K. Le Guin glacierscompare Almost everything is double like that for adolescents; their lies are true and their truths are lies, and their hearts are broken by the world. They gyre and fall; they see through everything, and are blind. Ursula K. Le Guin heartlyingfall Without war there are no heroes. What harm would that be? Oh, Lavinia, what a woman's question that is. Ursula K. Le Guin laviniaherowar What children don't understand, and can't understand until they grow up some, is how much the whole fabric and process of human society depends on everybody agreeing to ignore, most of the time, the fact that all of us are, most of the time, inadequate, incompetent, pitiful, and, in fact, naked to our enemies. None of us really has very much in the way of spiritual, moral clothing. We dress ourselves in rags. And we agree to say nothing about it. To a very large extent, it is human charity that clothes us. Ursula K. Le Guin growing-upspiritualchildren There is no kingdom like the forests. Ursula K. Le Guin kingdomsforests Dead anarchists make martyrs, you know, and keep living for centuries. But absent ones can be forgotten. Ursula K. Le Guin anarchistcenturyforgotten If a book were written all in numbers, it would be true. It would be just. Nothing said in words ever came out quite even. Things in words got twisted and ran together, instead of staying straight and fitting together. But underneath the words, at the center, like the center of the Square, it all came out even. Everything could change, yet nothing would be lost. If you saw the numbers you could see that, the balance, the pattern. You saw the foundations of the world. And they were solid. Ursula K. Le Guin squaresnumbersbook It is a real wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe. Ursula K. Le Guin wildernessrealsafe Go to bed; tired is stupid. Ursula K. Le Guin tiredbedstupid The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas. Ursula K. Le Guin walkscitiesdoe Fiction—and poetry and drama— cleanse the doors of perception. Ursula K. Le Guin perceptiondoorsdrama I can never get used to the fact, though I know it, that women are born cynics. Men have to learn cynicism. Infant girls could teach it to them. Ursula K. Le Guin girlmenfacts Saying that, he was suddenly himself again, despite his lunatic hair and eyes: a man whose personal dignity went so deep as to be nearly invisible... It was more than diginity. Integrity? Wholeness? Like a block of wood not carved. The infinite possibility, the unlimited and unqualified wholeness of being of the uncommitted, the nonacting, the uncarved: the being who, being nothing but himself, is everything. Ursula K. Le Guin blockeyeintegrity
