Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes
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There are very real differences between science fiction and realistic fiction, between horror and fantasy, between romance and mystery. Differences in writing them, in reading them, in criticizing them. Vive les différences! They're what gives each genre its singular flavor and savor, its particular interest for the reader - and the writer.
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Do you see, Arren, how an act is not, as young men think, like a rock that one picks up and throws, and it hits or misses, and that's the end of it. When that rock is lifted, the earth is lighter; the hand that bears it is heavier. When it is thrown, the circuits of the stars respond, and where it strikes or falls the universe is changed.
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In the tale, in the telling, we are all one blood. Take the tale in your teeth, then, and bite till the blood runs, hoping it's not poison; and we will all come to the end together, and even to the beginning: living, as we do, in the middle.
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Injustice makes the rules, and courage breaks them.
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To claim power over what you do not understand is not wise, nor is the end of it likely to be good.
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There are dance artists, painting artists and writing artists. Authors are writing artists. You can practice art in whatever medium you choose, and words are mine.
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Unless physical action reflects psychic action, unless the deeds express the person, I get very bored with adventure stories; often it seems that the more action there is, the less happens.
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When the genuine myth rises into consciousness, that is always its message. You must change your life.
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To think that realistic fiction is by definition superior to imaginative fiction is to think imitation is superior to invention.
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You fear them because you fear death, and rightly: for death is terrible and must be feared,' the mage said...'And life is also a terrible thing,' Ged said, 'and must be feared and praised.
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'But you knew them to be evil men-''Was I to join them therefore? To let their acts rule my own? I will not make their choices for them, nor will I let them make mine for me!'
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We need writers who know the difference between the production of a commodity and the practice of an art.
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He knew now, and the knowledge was hard, that his task had never been to undo what he had done, but to finish what he had begun.
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The more defensive a society, the more conformist.
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The same old hypocrisy. Life is a fight, and the strongest wins. All civilization does is hide the blood and cover up the hate with pretty words!
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From that time forth he believed that the wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later years he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees.
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She knew it, but she did not want to know it.
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What she needs, at least one thing she needs, is companionship. After all why should she eat? Who needs her to be alive? What we call psychosis is sometimes simply realism. But human beings can't live on realism alone.
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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.
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I'll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination.
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Honestly, orthodoxy concerns me about as much as it concerns your average jackrabbit. I only follow rules that take me where I want to go. If there aren't any rules, I make up my own and follow them strictly.
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Art and Entertainment are the same thing, in that the more deeply and genuinely entertaining a work is, the better art it is. To imply that Art is something heavy and solemn and dull, and Entertainment is modest but jolly and popular, is neo-Victorian idiocy at its worst.
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Before the moon I am, what a woman is, a woman of power, a woman's power, deeper than the roots of trees, deeper than the roots of islands, older than the Making, older than the moon.
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'Heal the Wound, Cure the illness, but let the Dying spirit go'