Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes
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Nobody had made this wilderness, and there was no evil in it and no good; it simply was.
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I was utterly miserable, and yet fearless as I had never been. I was carefree. It was like dying. It would be foolish to worry about anything while one died.
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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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The future has become uninhabitable. Such hopelessness can arise, I think, only from an inability to face the present, to live in the present, to live as a responsible being among other beings in this sacred world here and now, which is all we have, and all we need, to found our hope upon.
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Manipulated, one manipulates others.
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'In innocence there is no strength against evil,' said Sparrowhawk, a little wryly. 'But there is strength in it for good.'
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'Why must there be war?' 'Oh Lavinia, what a woman's question that is! Because men are men.'
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They can keep their God, they can keep their Light. I want the world back. I want questions, not the answer. I want my own life back, and my own death!
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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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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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To me the female principle is, or at least historically has been, basically anarchic. It values order without constraint, rule by custom not by force. It has been the male who enforces order, who constructs power structures, who makes, enforces, and breaks laws.
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'We're not outside the world, yoz. You know? We are the world. We're its language. So we live and it lives. You see?'
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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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...If at moments the facts seem to alter with an altered voice, why then you can choose the fact you like best; yet none of them are false, and it is all one story.
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Truth, as ever, avoids the stranger.
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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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There’s people all over these parts, and maybe beyond, who think, as you said, that nobody can be wise alone. So these people try to hold to each other.
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It is a terrible thing, this kindess that human beings do not lose. Terrible, because when we are finally naked in the dark and cold, it is all we have. We who are so rich, so full of strength, we end up with that small change. We have nothing else to give.
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A forest ecology is a delicate one. If the forest perishes, its fauna may go with it. The Athshean word for world is also the word for forest.
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We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable - but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.
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We scarcely know how much of our pleasure and interest in life comes to us through our eyes until we have to do without them; and part of that pleasure is that the eyes can choose where to look. But the ears can't choose where to listen.
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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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Men who fight wars in Winter don’t live till Spring.
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It seemed, at least, that they had not taught the boy to lie. But they had not taught him to know truth from lies.