Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes
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If a book told you something when you were fifteen, it will tell you it again when you're fifty, though you may understand it so differently that it seems you're reading a whole new book.
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Highdrake said that to make love is to unmake power.
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One man may as easily destroy, as govern: be King or Anti-King.
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I thought, shivering, that there are things that outweigh comfort, unless one is an old woman or a cat.
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You know, I don't think a lot about why one book connects with its readers and another doesn't. Probably because I don't want to start thinking, "Am I popular?" I spent way too much time thinking about that in high school.
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'But now you've come too far, and I warn you, woman! I will not have you set foot on this domain. And if you cross my will or dare so much as speak to me again, I will have you driven from Re Albi, and off the Overfell, with the dogs at your heels. Have you understood me?''No,' Tenar said, 'I have never understood men like you.'
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Have you never thought how danger must surround power as shadow does light?
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'Aye. Like knows like, sister'
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Suffering is dysfunctional, except as a bodily warning against danger. Psychologically and socially it’s merely destructive.
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He was a hard shrewd jovial politician, whose acts of kindness served his interest and whose interest was himself. His type is panhuman. I had met him on Earth, and on Hain, and on Ollul. I expect to meet him in Hell.
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All or nothing at all, the true lover says, and that’s the truth of it. My love will never die, he says. He claims eternity. And rightly. How can it die when it’s life itself? What do we know of eternity but the glimpse we get of it when we enter in that bond?
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The airport bookstore did not sell books, only bestsellers, which Sita Dulip cannot read without risking a severe systemic reaction.
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Crankish attacks on the freedom to read are common at present. When backed and coordinated by organized groups, they become sinister.
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How could anybody think this man was sick? All right, so he had funny dreams. That was better than being plain mean and hateful, like about one quarter of the people she had ever met.
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A man wants his virility regarded, a woman wants her femininity appreciated, however indirect and subtle the indications of regard and appreciation. On Winter they will not exist. One is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience.
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After a lifetime of living on hope because there is nothing but hope, one loses the taste for victory.
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The old knowledge had been difficult but not distressing. It had been all paradox and myth, and it had made sense. The new knowledge was all fact and reason, and it made no sense.
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The First Envoy to a world always comes alone. One alien is a curiosity, two are an invasion.
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'For a word to be spoken,' Ged answered slowly, 'there must be silence. Before, and after.' Then all at once he got up, saying, 'I have no right to speak of these things. The word that was mine to say I said wrong. It is better that I keep still; I will not speak again. Maybe there is no true power but the dark.'
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What you love, you will love. What you undertake you will complete. You are a fulfiller of hope; you are to be relied on. But seventeen years give little armor against despair...Consider, Arren. To refuse death is to refuse life.
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They prevented men from doing anything. But they did nothing themselves. They did not rule, they only blighted.
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I haven't any strength, I haven't any character, I'm a born tool. I haven't any destiny. All I have is dreams. And now other people run them.
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The juniper-scented liquor had volatilized his thoughts; he should be thinking that madness caused this man to call himself a king, but was thinking rather that kingship had driven this man mad.
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We decided that it was no good asking what is the meaning of life, because life isn't an answer, life is the question, and you, yourself, are the answer.