Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes
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All men were alien one to another, at times, not only aliens.
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So the first step out of childhood is made all at once, without looking before or behind, without caution, and nothing held in reserve.
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She too had lost her luck, and known death, and gone on.
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Statesmen remember things selectively.
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In the self-important, Falco reflected, there is always room for a little more self-importance.
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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.
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I have no control over my writing. I have lots of good intentions, but no control. There's a story that wants to be told.
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If they come prying they can leave curious.
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Go to bed; tired is stupid.
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What's to gain by silence?
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The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel.
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'What’s that all about?' Golden said to his wife, a rhetorical question. She looked at him and said nothing, a non-rhetorical answer.
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Obsessed with tricking the girl, he had fallen into the trap he laid for her. Bitterly he recognised that he was always believing his own lies, caught in nets he had elaborately woven.
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They had learned how to listen for the sense of the meeting, not the voice of the loudest. They had learned that they must judge each time whether obedience was necessary and right, or misplaced and wrong. They had learned that the act of violence is the act of weakness, and that the spirit’s strength lies in holding fast to the truth.
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We of Es Toch tell a little myth, which says that in the beginning the Creator told a great lie. For there was nothing at all, but the Creator spoke, saying, It exists. And behold, in order that the lie of God might be God’s truth, the universe at once began to exist.
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Great self-destruction follows upon unfounded fear.
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'The first lesson on Roke, and the last is, Do what is needful! And no more.''The lessons in between, then, must consist in learning what is needful.''They do.'
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And the rest, all the rest. All the days and lights and winds and years that would have been, and that would not be, that should be and were not, because he was dead. Shot dead on the road, in the wind, at twenty-one. His mountains unclimbed, never to be climbed.
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Who knows a man's name, holds that man's life in his keeping. Thus to Ged, who had lost faith in himself, Vetch had given him that gift that only a friend can give, the proof of unshaken, unshakeable trust.
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All the mystery and wisdom of the Masters, when it’s out in the daylight, doesn’t amount to so much, you know. Tricks of the trade-wonderful illusions. But people don’t want to know that. They want the illusions, the mysteries. Who can blame them? There’s so little in life that’s beautiful or worthy.
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There is nothing important except people. A person is defined solely by the extent of his influence over other people, by the sphere of his interrelationships; and morality is an utterly meaningless term unless defined as the good one does to others, the fulfilling of one’s function in the sociopolitical whole.
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Shelley was kicked out of Oxford-I think the story is unauthenticated, but who cares-because he painted a sign on the end wall of a dead-end alley: THIS WAY TO HEAVEN. I feel that every now and then his sign needs repainting.
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To which Silence of course made no reply, letting him hear what he had said and feel its foolishness thoroughly.
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'It is not right to want to die,' the Summoner said....'For the very old, the very ill, it may be. But life is given us. Surely it’s wrong not to hold and treasure that great gift!''Death also is given us,' said the king.