-
She too had lost her luck, and known death, and gone on.
Ursula K. Le Guin -
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.
Ursula K. Le Guin
-
Maybe that’s what the Masters are afraid of. Maybe celibacy isn’t as necessary as the Rule of Roke teaches. Maybe it’s not a way of keeping the power pure, but of keeping the power to themselves.
Ursula K. Le Guin -
If they come prying they can leave curious.
Ursula K. Le Guin -
'There’s nothing to fear, Lebannen,' he said gently, mockingly. 'They were only the dead.'
Ursula K. Le Guin -
What is the use trying to describe the flowing of a river at any one moment, and then at the next moment, and then at the next, and the next, and the next? You wear out. You say: There is a great river, and it flows through this land, and we have named it History.
Ursula K. Le Guin -
'The solution lies in secrecy,' said Medra. 'But so does the problem.'
Ursula K. Le Guin -
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
-
A scientist can pretend that his work isn’t himself, it’s merely the impersonal truth. An artist can’t hide behind the truth. He can’t hide anywhere.
Ursula K. Le Guin -
The First Envoy to a world always comes alone. One alien is a curiosity, two are an invasion.
Ursula K. Le Guin -
Suffering is dysfunctional, except as a bodily warning against danger. Psychologically and socially it’s merely destructive.
Ursula K. Le Guin -
See, the thing is, as a writer you are free. You are about the freest person that ever was. Your freedom is what you have bought with your solitude, your loneliness.
Ursula K. Le Guin -
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.
Ursula K. Le Guin -
'Well,' he said. 'Strange roads have strange guides. Let’s go on.'
Ursula K. Le Guin
-
She had come to Aka to learn how to sing this world's tune, to dance its dance; and at last, she thought, away from the city's endless noise, she was beginning to hear the music and to learn how to move to it.
Ursula K. Le Guin -
And I know that all I understand about living is having your work to do, and being able to do it. That’s the pleasure, and the glory, and all. And if you can’t do the work, or it’s taken from you, then what’s any good? You have to have something....
Ursula K. Le Guin -
As she stumbled forward she cried out in her mind, which was as dark, as shaken as the subterranean vault, 'Forgive me. O my Masters, O unnamed ones, most ancient ones, forgive me, forgive me!'There was no answer. There had never been an answer.
Ursula K. Le Guin -
I think hard times are coming. We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries, the realists of a larger reality.
Ursula K. Le Guin -
You can go home again, the General Temporal Theory asserts, so long as you understand that home is a place where you have never been.
Ursula K. Le Guin -
'Why must there be war?' 'Oh Lavinia, what a woman's question that is! Because men are men.'
Ursula K. Le Guin
-
'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?'
Ursula K. Le Guin -
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.
Ursula K. Le Guin -
Mr. Ai, we’ve seen the same events with different eyes; I wrongly thought they’d seem the same to us.
Ursula K. Le Guin -
What is a woman's power then?" she asked. "I don't think we know." "When has a woman power because she's a woman? With her children, I suppose. For a while..." "In her house, maybe." She looked around the kitchen. "But the doors are shut," she said, "the doors are locked." "Because you're valuable." "Oh yes. We're precious. So long as we're powerless.
Ursula K. Le Guin