Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes
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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.
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No granite is so hard as hatred and no clay so cold as cruelty.
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'The law of evolution is that the strongest survives.''Yes, and the strongest, in the existence of any social species, are those who are most social. In human terms, most ethical.'
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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.
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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.
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You’ll know what to say when the time comes. That’s the art, eh? What to say, and when to say it. And the rest is silence.
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Ignorant power is a bane!
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What would that be, a world without war? It would be the real world. Peace was the true life, the life of working and learning and bringing up children to work and learn. War, which devoured work, learning, and children, was the denial of reality.
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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.
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Whenever they tell me children want this sort of book and children need this sort of writing, I am going to smile politely and shut my earlids. I am a writer, not a caterer. There are plenty of caterers. But what children most want and need is what we and they don't know they want and don't think they need, and only writers can offer it to them.
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What is an anarchist? One who, choosing, accepts the responsibility of choice.
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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....
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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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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.
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The news had stirred him strangely. He listened for bulletins on the radio, which he had seldom turned on after finding that its basic function was advertising things for sale.
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'Summon up a supper,' he said. 'Oh, I could. On golden plates, if you like. But that’s illusion, and when you eat illusions you end up hungrier than before.'
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A story rises from the springs of creation, from the pure will to be; it tells itself; I takes its own course, finds its own way, its own words; and the writer's job is to be its medium.
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That I was not dueling with the king, but trying to communicate with him, was itself an incommunicable fact.
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All I know is the dark, the night underground. And that’s all there really is. That’s all there is to know, in the end. The silence, and the dark. You know everything, wizard. But I know one thing - the one true thing!
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What is one man's and one woman's love and desire, against the history of two worlds, the greatest revolution of our lifetimes, the hope, the unending cruelty of our species? A little thing. But a key is a little thing, next to the door it opens.
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Nothing said in words ever came out quite even. Things in words got twisted and ran together, instead of staying straight and fitting together.
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Armed men don’t sit down and talk.
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It was men’s ambitions, they said, that had perverted all the arts to ends of gain.
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'The solution lies in secrecy,' said Medra. 'But so does the problem.'