Quotes from le guin ursula k v

To know there is a choice is to have to make the choice: change or stay: river or rock.

It's not a weapon or a woman can make a man, or magery either, or any power, anything but himself.

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.

It is not altogether a bad thing to have criminal ancestors. An arsonist grandfather may bequeath one a nose for smelling smoke.

Living, being in the world, was a much greater and stranger thing than she had ever dreamed.

When I was young, I had to choose between the life of being and the life of doing. And I leapt at the latter like a trout to a fly. But each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act again and yet again. Then very seldom do you come upon a space, a time like this, between act and act, when you may stop and simply be. or wonder who, after all, you are.

To claim power over what you do not understand is not wise, nor is the end of it likely to be good.

To leave the reader free to decide what your work means, that's the real art; it makes the work inexhaustible.

Nothing remains the same from one moment to the next, you can't step into the same river twice. Life--evolution--the whole universe of space/time, matter/energy--existence itself--is essentially change.

Darkness is only in the mortal eye, that thinks it sees, but sees not.

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.

Most civilisations, perhaps, look shinier in general terms and from several light-years away.

There are very real differences between science fiction and realistic fiction, between horror and fantasy, between romance and mystery. Differences in writing them, in reading them, in criticizing them. Vive les différences! They're what gives each genre its singular flavor and savor, its particular interest for the reader--and the writer.

The individual cannot bargain with the State. The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coin itself.

Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape? The moneylenders, the knownothings, the authoritarians have us all in prison; if we value the freedom of the mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can.

Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge); by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee, and are therefore more honored in their day than prophets); and by futurologists (salaried). Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying.

Well, the secret to writing is writing. It's only a secret to people who don't want to hear it. Writing is how you be a writer.

Violence gains nothing, killing wins nothing -- only sometimes nothing is what people want. Death is what they want. And they get it.

The more defensive a society, the more conformist.