URSULA K. LE GUIN QUOTES IV

American author (1929- )

You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

The Dispossessed


The individual cannot bargain with the State. The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coin itself.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

The Dispossessed

Tags: power


Realism is a very sophisticated form of literature, a very grown-up one. And that may be its weakness. But fantasy seems to be eternal and omnipresent and always attractive to kids.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

interview, The Paris Review, fall 2013

Tags: realism


People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

The Wave in the Mind: Talks & Essays on the Writer, the Reader, & the Imagination

Tags: dragons


While we read a novel, we are insane--bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren't there, we hear their voices, we watch the battle of Borodino with them, we may even become Napoleon. Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction


O foolish writer. Now moves. Even in storytime, dreamtime, once-upon-a-time, now isn't then.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

foreward, Tales from Earthsea

Tags: present


Revolution is our obligation: our hope of evolution.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

The Dispossessed

Tags: revolution


Fire and fear, good servants, bad lords.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

The Left Hand of Darkness

Tags: fear


It is of the nature of idea to be communicated: written, spoken, done. The idea is like grass. It craves light, likes crowds, thrives on crossbreeding, grows better for being stepped on.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

The Dispossessed

Tags: ideas


There are things that outweigh comfort, unless one is an old woman or a cat.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

The Left Hand of Darkness

Tags: cats


Nothing remains the same from one moment to the next, you can't step into the same river twice. Life--evolution--the whole universe of space/time, matter/energy--existence itself--is essentially change.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

The Lathe of Heaven

Tags: change


No, I don't mean love, when I say patriotism. I mean fear. The fear of the other. And its expressions are political, not poetical: hate, rivalry, aggression. It grows in us, that fear. It grows in us year by year.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

The Left Hand of Darkness

Tags: patriotism


If I had to pick a hero, it would be Charles Darwin--the size of his mind, which included all that scientific curiosity and knowledge seeking, and the ability to put it all together. There is a genuine spirituality about Darwin's thinking.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

interview, The Paris Review, fall 2013

Tags: Charles Darwin


Have you never thought how danger must surround power as shadow does light?

URSULA K. LE GUIN

A Wizard of Earthsea

Tags: power


He arrived at ideas the slow way, never skating over the clear, hard ice of logic, nor soaring on the slipstreams of imagination, but slogging, plodding along on the heavy ground of existence. He did not see the connections, which is said to be the hallmark of intellect. He felt connections--like a plumber.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

The Lathe of Heaven

Tags: ideas


Virginity is now a mere preamble or waiting room to be got out of as soon as possible; it is without significance. Old age is similarly a waiting room, where you go after life’s over and wait for cancer or a stroke. The years before and after the menstrual years are vestigial: the only meaningful condition left to women is that of fruitfulness.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

"The Space Crone", Co-Evolution Quarterly, summer 1976

Tags: Ursula K. Le Guin


One swallow does not make a summer.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

The Lathe of Heaven

Tags: summer


To know there is a choice is to have to make the choice: change or stay: river or rock.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

"A Man of the People", Four Ways to Forgiveness

Tags: choice


Greed puts out the sun.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

The Other Wind

Tags: greed


Children know perfectly well that unicorns aren't real, but they also know that books about unicorns, if they are good books, are true books.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction

Tags: fantasy