Aeneas' mother is a star?"

"No; a goddess."

I said cautiously, "Venus is the power that we invoke in spring, in the garden, when things begin growing. And we call the evening star Venus."

He thought it over. Perhaps having grown up in the country, among pagans like me, helped him understand my bewilderment. "So do we, he said. "But Venus also became more...With the help of the Greeks. They call her Aphrodite...There was a great poet who praised her in Latin. Delight of men and gods, he called her, dear nurturer. Under the sliding star signs she fills the ship-laden sea and the fruitful earth with her being; through her the generations are conceived and rise up to see the sun; from her the storm clouds flee; to her the earth, the skillful maker, offers flowers. The wide levels of the sea smile at her, and all the quiet sky shines and streams with light..."

It was the Venus I had prayed to, it was my prayer, though I had no such words. They filled my eyes with tears and my heart with inexpressible joy.


Ursula K. Le Guin

  Email Quote to Friends   Link to Quote   Create Short URL  Publish Text About This Quote   Share on Facebook, Twitter, and more
  See Recommended Quotes For You

Related

I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ...
KELLY JONES
you left
and i wanted you still
yet i deserved someone
who was willing to stay
RUPI KAUR
Tonight I Can Write

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for e...
PABLO NERUDA
Hey, Venus, I have two words for you,' Aphrodite said.
Venus hesitated and glanced over her sho...
P.C. CAST
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example,'The night is shattered
an...
PABLO NERUDA
He froze, becoming stone still. As the hover climbed the hill to the palace, his shoulders sank, and...
MARISSA MEYER
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

Write, for instance: "The night is full of ...
PABLO NERUDA
Sick of body, unable to rise up, vehemently intoxicated without wine . . .

And it is as t...
AL-MUTANABBī
Aphrodite,” [Annabeth] said.
“Venus?” Hazel asked in amazement.
“Mom,” Piper s...
RICK RIORDAN
Could any State on Earth Immortall be,
Venice by Her rare Goverment is She;
Venice Great N...
JAMES HOWELL
I believe in you, my darling. I believe in you."
He closed his eyes.
And when he opened th...
ELIZABETH HOYT
Jesse must have heard me because she stuck her head out of her bedroom and then rushed over. “Can ...
PATRICIA BRIGGS
Once upon a time, before chimaera and seraphim, there was the sun and the moons. The sun was betroth...
LAINI TAYLOR
he turns to the sunlight,
And lifts her face up,
She searches for the light,
The ligh...
ASHISH BHARDWAJ
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom y...
EDGAR ALLAN POE
STAINS
With red clay between my toes,
and the sun setting over my head,
the ghost of ...
BRENDA SUTTON ROSE
Did she say anything before she died?" he asked.
"Yes," the surgeon said. "She said, 'Forgive h...
SHERMAN ALEXIE
MY MOTHER GETS DRESSED

It is impossible for my mother to do even
the simplest...
DAPHNE GOTTLIEB
My father, father!' - she might pray to the winds;
no innocence moves her judges mad for war. <...
AESCHYLUS
She came towards me with a juicy gash between her legs that smelled like my best friend's sister" DAVE MATTHES Valentine whirled. Clary, lying half-conscious in the sand, her wrists and arms a screaming agony, s...
CASSANDRA CLARE
The multicolored kitten snuggled between her breasts.

Lucky cat.

"I thought ma...
CANDIS TERRY
GOD made a wonderful mother,
A mother who never grows old;
He made her smile of the sunshine,...
PAT O'REILLY
I caught a red bird once,
I fell in love with her,
Took the red bird home with me,
I...
QUETZAL
Be to her, Persephone,
All the things I might not be;
Take her head upon your knee.
S...
EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
I love you," he said.

She looked up at him, her eyes shiny and black, then looked away. "...
RAINBOW ROWELL
Now from his breast into the eyes the ache
of longing mounted, and he wept at last,
his de...
HOMER
The car came opposite her, and she curtsied so low that recovery was impossible, and she sat down in...
E.F. BENSON
The thunder howled and the rain splashed, the leaves played with the breeze and the lightning flashe...
AVIJEET DAS
What are you looking at?" Jordan demanded finally, watching
her.

"A dragon." When ...
JUDITH MCNAUGHT
And I'm not sensitive at all, Philip. Just
mean."
He smiled down at her. "Have you ever co...
NORA ROBERTS
Put your arms around my neck, sweetheart."
"Whatever for?"
He grasped her wrists and lifte...
CATHERINE ANDERSON
What do you want to show me?"

"Nothing, really. I just want to be alone with you for a mi...
RAINBOW ROWELL
Her hands brushed Shane's, and he let go of the cards and took hold.

And then somehow she...
RACHEL CAINE
For the Wife Beater's Wife

With blue irises her face is blossomed. Blue
Circling to ...
BRUCE WEIGL
I didn't mean to tell you," Mrs. Whatsit faltered. "I didn't mean ever to let you know. But oh, my d...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE
My name...my name is Mary. I'm here with a friend.'
Rhage stopped breathing. His heart skipped ...
J.R. WARD
Dive into the river of the present, but don't thrash about, go with the flow.
JIM GENOVESE
Might I,” quavered Mary, “might I have a bit of earth?”

In her eagerness she did no...
FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT
While the storm clouds gather far across the sea,
Let us swear allegiance to a land that's free,...
IRVING BERLIN
Edie Sedgwick (1943-1971)

I don't know how she did it. Fire
She was shaking all over...
PATTI SMITH
The collar had restrained his winds but not killed them. They uncoiled from behind the shadows, read...
LISA MANTCHEV
An angel for some,
a demon for some,
for me, it’s heart of the one.
Never want to h...
ABHISHEK KUMAR SINGH
Serenity barely heard the last of his words as he made his way out of the cabin. Instead, her attent...
KINLEY MACGREGOR
Soeur Marie Emelie"

Soeur Marie Emelie
is little and very old:
her eyes are ony...
CARYLL HOUSELANDER
THIS IS WHY

He will never be given to wonder much
if he was the mouth for some cruel...
MICHAEL RYAN
He then kissed her.

It was a very long time before he let her go. When he did, she looked...
EVA IBBOTSON
My beloved is the sun
And I am the earth that thrives only in her warmth. My beloved is the rai...
C.L. WILSON
We have tears in our eyes
As we wave our goodbyes,
We so loved being with you, we three. ROALD DAHL
When you've lived as long as I have," he said, eyes heavy-lidded but definitely on her, "you learn t...
NALINI SINGH
Eccolo!” he exclaimed.

At the same moment the ground gave way, and with a cry she fell ...
E.M. FORSTER
She stared into his eyes and announced, “A good-bye kiss.”
It was at that Raid stopped dead...
KRISTEN ASHLEY
Sonnet 130

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red ...
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
I said, I want to tell you something.
She said, you can tell me tomorrow.
I had never told...
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER
There once was a girl who found herself dead.
She peered over the ledge of heaven
and saw ...
JANDY NELSON
Her room was warm and lightsome. A huge doll sat with her legs apart in the copious easy-chair besid...
JAMES JOYCE
While this is all very amusing, the kiss that will free the girl is the kiss that she most desires,�...
CASSANDRA CLARE
Hear, nature, hear; dear goddess, hear!
Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend
To make ...
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
And then that voice from behind her said her name again.

"Celaena."

They had d...
SARAH J. MAAS
The Bear and the Maiden Fair


A bear there was, a bear, a bear!
All black and b...
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN
Eena turned aside, breathing shallowly as her mind raced with questions. She was glad he couldn’t ...
RICHELLE E. GOODRICH
You are so much more than I bargained for,” I confessed, which gained her attention. “I knew I w...
C.A. HARMS
The Story of the Woman with Three Brothers"

A woman once had three brothers. They all had...
LISA SEE
Was it ever . . .” She winced, wished she could muffle the need to ask. “Before, with anyone els...
J.D. ROBB
“Here’s my number. I almost forgot to give it to you.”
I swallow as I stare at t...
KATIE MCGARRY
A footman knocked at the door, the sound echoing through the entrance hall.
The sisters looked...
LISA KLEYPAS
Your daughter is ugly.
She knows loss intimately,
carries whole cities in her belly.
...
WARSAN SHIRE
Failing and Flying"

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when lo...
JACK GILBERT
What are you doing?" she asked.

Grimacing, he considered returning his mouth to hers and ...
LORRAINE HEATH
The connection he felt with her at that moment was mind-boggling. "No regrets," he whispered.
<...
ELIZABETH REYES
She loved all the wolves behind her house, but she loved one of them most of all.

And thi...
MAGGIE STIEFVATER
Amanda, you finally decided to answer the phone,” her mom exclaimed after picking up at the first ...
REBECCA MCNUTT
Evening by evening
Among the Brookside rushes,
Laura bow'd her head to hear,
Lizzie v...
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI
There is something of yours I would like to return to you."
"What?"
He leaned across the d...
HOLLY BLACK
Evie awoke to the cheerful glow of a tiny flame. A candle sat on the bedside table. Someone was sitt...
LISA KLEYPAS
Inside the church, the bondsmaids were walking slowly down the aisle,
with the little petal gir...
MELISSA DE LA CRUZ
Now is the only time we have, and the only time that we have any control over.
RICHARD CARLSON
So, having found a lady, could you not have come to her aid, or left her alone? Why drag her into yo...
NEIL GAIMAN
Stop! Stop!”
Sophie shrieked with laughter as she ran down the stone steps that led to the g...
JULIA QUINN
Everyone has always said I look like Bailey, but I don't.
I have grey eyes to her green,
a...
JANDY NELSON
For Lucie," Peter said quietly, the flame of a gilded saint's candle fluttering in his hand."
"...
SARAH BLAKLEY-CARTWRIGHT
Do you know how far the wall is from the mines?”
He gave her blank look. She closed her eyes...
SARAH J. MAAS
The leaves were long, the grass was green,
The hemlock-umbels tall and fair,
And in the gl...
J.R.R. TOLKIEN
Promise to give me a kiss on my brow when I am dead. --I shall feel it."

She dropped her ...
VICTOR HUGO
Scully nodded. Of course. It made sense. Complete sense. No question about it. Mulder was perfectly ...
LES MARTIN
She was beauty and intelligence stitched together with no seams
She lived in a world with no d...
HUBERT MARTIN
A love poem about the most invisible woman:

The perfect mind, the perfect cover.
I k...
WILL ADVISE
~Posters with torn edges hanging from rotten walls~

The doctor told me something once DAVE MATTHES
She had the prettiest eyes
& prettiest smile with
Wounds on her heart and
bruis...
TANYA GAMBHIR
Old Mother Hubbard
Went to the cupboard
To get her dear dog a bone.
Though the cupb...
KRISTEN MCKEE
He leaned forward to inspect her closer. "Is that all hair?"

... Sudden, overwhelming pan...
MARISSA MEYER
The Janus Guard will also be out that night,” he said, one hand reaching out to squeeze her should...
LESLEY LIVINGSTON
Hair the color of lemons,'" Rudy read. His fingers touched the words. "You told him about me?"
...
MARKUS ZUSAK
Perry was leaning into my mother as he listened to what she said. They talked so close. He only lean...
MARGARET MCMULLAN
So look," he began, leaning over the desk, "I was—"
"Excuse me?" Bethany said. Her voice was ...
SARAH DESSEN
He yearned for a glimpse of her throughout the day,
Only at nights he could see her,
Be w...
ANONYMOUS
Now for my pains, promise me-“
And she hesitated.
“What?” asked Marius.
“Prom...
VICTOR HUGO
Ô, the wine of a woman
from heaven is sent,
more perfect than all
that a man can in...
ROMAN PAYNE
It was my teacher's genius, her quick sympathy, her loving tact
which made the first years of ...
HELEN KELLER
She raised her head again. "Aren't you supposed to come over all manly man and forbid the little lad...
DANA STABENOW

More Ursula K. Le Guin

To light a candle is to cast a shadow.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
It had never occurred to me before that music and thinking are so much alike. In fact you could say ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
If you want your writing to be taken seriously, don't marry and have kids, and above all, don...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
As great scientists have said and as all children know, it is above all by the imagination that we a...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
To oppose something is to maintain it.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
In so far as one denies what is, one is possessed by what is not, the compulsions, the fantasies, th...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The artist deals in what cannot be said in words. The artist whose medium is fiction does this in wo...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Great artists make the roads; good teachers and good companions can point them out. But there ain...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
There are no right answers to wrong questions.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The only questions that really matter are the ones you ask yourself.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
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
I talk about the gods, I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust every...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, m...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The children of the revolution are always ungrateful, and the revolution must be grateful that it is...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, make...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
It is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception and compassion and hope.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps chan...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
If you see a whole thing - it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives... But up close a...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Heaven and earth
begin in the unnamed:
name’s the mother
of the ten thousand things...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
What is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where th...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
They have nothing to give. They have no power of making. All their power is to darken and destroy. T...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
He tried to read an elementary economics text; it bored him past endurance, it was like listening to...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
When you light a candle, you also cast a shadow.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
It is what it looks like and is called. A jail. it is not a front for something else, not a facade, ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
And though I came to forget or regret all I have ever done, yet I would remember that once I saw the...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
I do not care what comes after; I have seen the dragons on the wind of morning.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
But it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Great artists make the roads; good teachers and good companions can point them out. But there ain't ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering hap...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
I believe that maturity is not an outgrowing, but a growing up: that an adult is not a dead child, b...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Morning comes whether you set the alarm or not.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
If science fiction is the mythology of modern technology, then its myth is tragic.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what come...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
No man, no power, can bind the action of wizardry or still the words of power. For they are the very...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
But you must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The creative adult is the child who has survived.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
He is far too intelligent to become really cerebral.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
There was a wall. It did not look important. It was built of uncut rocks roughly mortared. An adult ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
When in the Land of Property think like a propertarian. Dress like one, eat like one, act like one, ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
I never knew anybody . . . who found life simple. I think a life or a time looks simple when you lea...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Not even need and love can defeat fate...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The best I can say, it's like this. A man's in his skin, see, like a nut in its shell ... It's hard ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words a...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Those whom heaven helps we call the sons of heaven. They do not learn this by learning. They do not ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
I do try to separate my personal activism - showing up at a demonstration or something - from what I...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Nobody who says, ‘I told you so’ has ever been, or will ever be, a hero.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
"In innocence there is no strength against evil," said Sparrowhawk, a little wryly. "But there is ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
I doubt that the imagination can be suppressed. If you truly eradicated it in a child, he would grow...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
I don't write tracts, I write novels. I'm not a preacher, I'm a fiction writer.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
But it doesn't take a thousand men to open a door, my lord."

"It might to keep it open.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
We're each of us alone, to be sure. What can you do but hold your hand out in the dark?
URSULA K. LE GUIN
War as a moral metaphor is limited, limiting, and dangerous. By reducing the choices of action to �...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Only in silence the word, only in dark the light, only in dying life: bright the hawk's flight on th...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
War as a moral metaphor is limited, limiting, and dangerous. By reducing the choices of action to �...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
He knew now, and the knowledge was hard, that his task had never been to undo what he had done, but ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
You thought, as a boy, that a mage is one who can do anything. So I thought, once. So did we all. An...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
I had forgotten how much light there is in the world, till you gave it back to me.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
It is very hard for evil to take hold of the unconsenting soul.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
I bid your voice be dumb until the day you find a word worth speaking.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
He was born to be alone, a damned cold intellectual, an egoist.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Independence was as far as his mind could reach. Yet I think his mind groped further, towards what h...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
I use your love as a man burns a candle, burns it away, to light his steps.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
I was with you at the beginning of your journey. It is right that I should follow you to its end.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
But I can't say that gratitude was my motive for infringing on the Law of Cultural Embargo. I was no...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
To see that your life is a story while you're in the middle of living it may be a help to living it ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering hap...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
'The fact is,' I said, 'that you're unable, or unwilling, to believe in the fact that I believe in ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The law of evolution is that the strongest survives!' 'Yes, and the strongest, in the existence of a...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
He explained to Atro that he now understood why the army was organized as it was. It was indeed quit...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
He had been taught as a child that Urras was a festering mass of inequity, iniquity, and waste. But ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Encyclopedia Planaria, in forty-four volumes, is not portable, and after all, what is entirely r...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
To make a thief, make an owner; to create crime, create laws.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Ged saw all these things from outside and apart, alone, and his heart was very heavy in him, though ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
To light a candle is to cast a shadow...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Some dreams tell us what we wish to believe. Some dreams tell us what we fear. Some dreams are of wh...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what come...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
If a book were written all in numbers, it would be true. It would be just. Nothing said in words eve...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
If one believes that words are acts, as I do, then one must hold writers responsible for what their ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go t...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Ai taught me a Terran game played on squares with little stones, called go, an excellent difficult g...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The island of Gont, a single mountain that lifts its peak a mile above the storm-racked Northeast Se...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Life rises out of death, death rises out of life; in being opposite they yearn to each other, they g...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
My world, my Earth is a ruin. A planet spoiled by the human species. We multiplied and fought and go...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The explorer who will not come back or send back his ships to tell his tale is not an explorer, only...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
There are talking dogs all over the place, unbelievably boring they are, on and on and on about sex ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Oh, Hank," Susan whispered, "their wings are furry."

"Oh, James," Harriet whispered, "the...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Things don't have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful functio...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the
darkness, and they do not come back. The place they...
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 w...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
A forest ecology is a delicate one. If the forest perishes, its fauna may go with it. The Athshean w...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
This was the way he had to go; he had no choice. He had never had any choice. He was only a dreamer.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
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
Would you give up the craft of your hands, and the passion of your heart, and the hunger of your min...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The little Otak was hiding in the rafters of the house, as it did when strangers entered. There it s...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
I always wondered why the makers leave housekeeping and cooking out of their tales. Isn't it what al...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
When I was young, I had to choose between the life of being and the life of doing. And I leapt at th...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
I always wondered why the makers leave housekeeping and cooking out of their tales. Isn't it what al...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Dead anarchists make martyrs, you know, and keep living for centuries. But absent ones can be forgot...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
We scarcely know how much of our pleasure and interest in life comes to us through our eyes until we...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
In our loss and fear we craved the acts of religion, the ceremonies that allow us to admit our helpl...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Which is better off, a lizard basking in the sun or a philosopher?
URSULA K. LE GUIN
My dogs have barked at a beggar tonight and he proves a prince of starlight.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
... “Dangerous!” Vea laughed radiantly. “What an utterly marvellous compliment! Why am I dange...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Anyhow they’re always exceptions. But most women, their only relationship to a man is having. Eith...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
We have nothing but our freedom. We have nothing to give you but your own freedom. We have no law bu...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
What is an anarchist? One who, choosing, accepts the responsibility of choice.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
It is our suffering that brings us together. It is not love. Love does not obey the mind, and turns ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Do you see, Arren, how an act is not, as young men think, like a rock that one picks up and throws, ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
While we read a novel, we are insane—bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren't the...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
An Odonian undertook monogamy just as he might undertake a joint enterprise in production, a ballet ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
I am living in a nightmare, from which from time to time I wake in sleep.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The prisoner is the jailer's jailer.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
There's a point, around the age of twenty, when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
What good is power when you're too wise to use it?
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Where does your soul go, when you die in Hell?
URSULA K. LE GUIN
But need alone is not enough to set power free: there must be knowledge.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Belief is the wound that knowledge heals.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
A promise is a direction taken, a self-limitation of choice. As Odo pointed out, if no direction is ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
To use the enemy's weapon is to play the enemy's game...speak the truth and hear the truth.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Light is the left hand of darkness
and darkness the right hand of light.
Two are one, life...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
We all have forests on our minds. Forests unexplored, unending. Each one of us gets lost in the fore...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
In many college English courses the words “myth” and “symbol” are given a tremendous charge ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
To oppose something is to maintain it... You must go somewhere else; you must have another goal; the...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
In feudal times the aristocracy had sent their sons to university, conferring superiority on the ins...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Children know perfectly well that unicorns aren’t real, but they also know that books about unicor...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
His words cost him so much, she thought, not like hers that just came dancing out of the air and wen...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
On the blank leaf glued to the inner back cover I drew the double curve within the circle, and black...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Death and life are the same thing-like the two sides of my hand, the palm and the back. And still th...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
There must be darkness to see the stars.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The experience was disagreeable. I began to feel like an atheist praying.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The fish in the creek said nothing. Fish never do. Few people know what fish think about injustice, ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel......
URSULA K. LE GUIN
A profound love between two people involves, after all, the power and chance of doing profound hurt.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
What is an anarchist? One who, choosing, accepts the responsibility of choice
URSULA K. LE GUIN
And the strangest thing about the nightmare street was that none of the millions of things for sale ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
I believe that all novels, ... deal with character, and that it is to express character – not to p...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
«I am tired,» he said. «I did a lot today. That is, I did something. The only thing I have ever d...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: t...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The duty of the individual is to accept no rule, to be the initiator of his own acts, to be responsi...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The individual cannot bargain with the State. The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issu...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
I know who I was, I can tell you who I may have been, but I am, now, only in this line of words I wr...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
This Stone

He went looking for a road
that doesn't lead to death.
He went looki...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
So maybe the difference isn't language. Maybe it's this: animals do neither good nor evil. They do a...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
What are we so afraid of? Why don't we let 'em tell us we're afraid? What is it they're afraid of?" ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Why are men afraid of women?"
If your strength is only the other's weakness, you live in fear,"...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
But each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act again...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
I have given my love to what is worthy of love. Is that not the kingdom and the unperishing spring?
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Orr had a tendency to assume that people knew what they were doing, perhaps because he generally ass...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
I don’t like making the rest of the world live in my dreams, but I certainly don’t want to live ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
They made love. Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; re-made al...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Praise God from whom all blessings flow, including good-natured men.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The quality of the will to power is, precisely, growth. Achievement is its cancellation. To be, the ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
An irrelevant and poignant sensation of pleasure rose in him, like a tree that grew up and flowered ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
A person is defined solely by the extent of his influence over other people, by the sphere of his in...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
A machine is more blameless, more sinless even than any animal. It has no intentions whatsoever but ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
On top of pique, umbrage, and ennui. Oh, the French diseases of the soul.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
He never spoke with any bitterness at all, no matter how awful the things he said. Are there really ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
George, it's impossible to correct a defective reality-orientation overnight.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
I did a lot today. That is, I did something. The only thing I have ever done. I pressed a button. It...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
It was more than dignity. Integrity? Wholeness? Like a block of wood not carved. The infinite possib...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
He had grown up in a country run by politicians who sent the pilots to man the bombers to kill the b...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; re-made all the time, made...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
But now his dry and silent grieving for his lost wife must end, for there she stood, the fierce, rec...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
You don't speak of dreams as unreal. They exist. They leave a mark behind them.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Current-borne, wave-flung, tugged hugely by the whole might of ocean, the jellyfish drifts in the ti...
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, an...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Saying that, he was suddenly himself again, despite his lunatic hair and eyes: a man whose personal ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
We're in the world, not against it. It doesn't work to try to stand
outside things and run them...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Current-borne, wave-flung, tugged hugely by the whole might of ocean, the jellyfish drifts in the ti...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
You have to help another person. But it's not right to play God with masses of people. To be God you...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Men call women faithless, changeable, and though they say it in jealousy of their own ever-threatene...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
There's a good deal in common between the mind's eye and the TV screen, and though the TV se...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
I never knew a person who reacted so wholly and rapidly to a changed situation as Estraven. I was re...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
We make sense of the world intentionally. Faced with chaos, we seek or make the familiar, and build ...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that di...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
We have inhabited both the actual and the imaginary realms for a long time. But we don't live in eit...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Truth is a matter of the imagination.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
If a book told you something when you were fifteen, it will tell you it again when you're fifty, tho...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
So the first step out of childhood is made all at once, without looking before or behind, without ca...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
He said after a little while, 'I see why you say that only men do evil, I think. Even sharks are inn...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Having intelligence, we must not act in ignorance. Having choice, we must not act without responsibi...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
For discipline is the channel in which our acts run strong and deep; where there is no direction, th...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
I am tired of safe places, and roofs, and walls around me.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
In Enlad," said Arren after a while, "we have a story about the boy whose schoolmaster
was a st...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
But when we crave power over life—endless wealth, unassailable safety, immortality—then desire b...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
What is evil?" asked the younger man. The round web, with its black center, seemed to watch them bot...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
To see a candle’s light, one must take it into a dark place.
URSULA K. LE GUIN