Ursula K. LeGuin quote: "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. What is the other text, the original? I have no answer. I suppose it is the source, the deep sea where ideas swim, and one catches them in nets of words and swings them shining into the boat... where in this metaphor they die and get canned and eaten in sandwiches."

The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, make...
URSULA K. LEGUIN

Love doesn't just sit there like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made n...
URSULA K. LEGUIN

The quality of the will to power is, precisely, growth. Achievement is its cancellation. To be, the ...
URSULA K. LEGUIN

He is far too intelligent to become really cerebral.
URSULA K. LEGUIN

Public speaking is done in the public tongue, the national or tribal language; and the language of o...
URSULA K. LEGUIN

Virginity is now a mere preamble or waiting room to be got out of as soon as possible; it is without...
URSULA K. LEGUIN

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. LEGUIN

My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world and exiles me from it.
URSULA K. LEGUIN

Legends of prediction are common throughout the whole Household of Man. Gods speak, spirits speak, c...
URSULA K. LEGUIN

If you deny any affinity with another person or kind of person, if you declare it to be wholly diffe...
URSULA K. LEGUIN

Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.
URSULA K. LEGUIN

What the hell is nostalgia doing in a science-fiction film? With the whole universe and all the futu...
URSULA K. LEGUIN

What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
URSULA K. LEGUIN

In so far as one denies what is, one is possessed by what is not, the compulsions, the fantasies, th...
URSULA K. LEGUIN

The pornography of violence of course far exceeds, in volume and general acceptance, sexual pornogra...
URSULA K. LEGUIN

The world is in balance <...>. To light a candle is to cast a shadow.
URSULA K. LEGUIN

The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and...
URSULA K. LEGUIN

When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.
URSULA K. LEGUIN

It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end.
URSULA K. LEGUIN

Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.
URSULA K. LEGUIN

The preservation of life seems to be rather a slogan than a genuine goal of the anti-abortion forces...
URSULA K. LEGUIN

The children of the revolution are always ungrateful, and the revolution must be grateful that it is...
URSULA K. LEGUIN

If we can get that realistic feminine morality working for us, if we can trust ourselves and so let ...
URSULA K. LEGUIN

Reason is a faculty far larger than mere objective force. When either the political or the scientifi...
URSULA K. LEGUIN

The misogyny that shapes every aspect of our civilization is the institutionalized form of male fear...
URSULA K. LEGUIN

from The Lathe of Heaven Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, r...
URSULA K. LEGUIN

I certainly wasn't happy. Happiness has to do with reason, and only reason earns it. What I was give...
URSULA K. LEGUIN

As great scientists have said and as all children know, it is above all by the imagination that we a...
URSULA K. LEGUIN

The only thing that makes life possible is a permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what co...
URSULA K. LEGUIN

The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what come...
URSULA K. LEGUIN

What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
URSULA K. LEGUIN

There's a good deal in common between the mind's eye and the TV screen, and though the TV set has al...
URSULA K. LEGUIN

It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end
URSULA K. LEGUIN

In the tale, in the telling, we are all one blood. Take the tale in your teeth, then, and bite till ...
URSULA K. LEGUIN

The story - from Rumplestiltskin to War and Peace - is one of the basic tools invented by the human ...
URSULA K. LEGUIN

Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made ...
URSULA K. LEGUIN

A Woman is home caring for her children! even if she can't. Trapped in this well-built trap, A Woman...
URSULA K. LEGUIN

We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps chan...
URSULA K. LEGUIN

To me the female principle is, or at least historically has been, basically anarchic. It values orde...
URSULA K. LEGUIN

Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing -- instead of a...
URSULA K. LEGUIN

It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters in the end.
URSULA K. LEGUIN

I certainly wasn't happy. Happiness has to do with reason, and only reason earns it. What I was give...
URSULA K. LEGUIN

It is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception and compassion and hope.
URSULA K. LEGUIN

Love does not just sit there, like a stone; it had to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made...
URSULA K. LEGUIN

To oppose something is to maintain it.
URSULA K. LEGUIN

If you see a whole thing - it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives... But up close a wor...
URSULA K. LEGUIN

The power of the harasser, the abuser, the rapist depends above all on the silence of women.
URSULA K. LEGUIN

When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep
URSULA K. LEGUIN

The only questions that really matter are the ones you ask yourself.
URSULA K. LEGUIN

What is an anarchist? One who, choosing, accepts the responsibility of choice
URSULA K. LEGUIN

The important thing is not the finding, it is the seeking, it is the devotion with which one spins t...
URSULA K. LEGUIN

Success is somebody else's failure. Success is the American Dream we can keep dreaming because most ...
URSULA K. LEGUIN

Morning comes whether you set the alarm or not.
URSULA K. LEGUIN

To hear, one must be silent
URSULA K. LEGUIN

The creative adult is the child who has survived.
URSULA K. LEGUIN

There are no right answers to wrong questions.
URSULA K. LEGUIN

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

Ursula K. LeGuin

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