Quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin

About Ursula K. Le Guin:

Ursula Kroeber Le Guin is an American author of novels, children's books, and short stories, mainly in the genres of fantasy and science fiction. She has also written poetry and essays. First published in the 1960s, her work has often depicted futuristic or imaginary alternative worlds in politics, natural environment, gender, religion, sexuality and ethnography.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Fish and visitors stink after three days.

Ursula K. Le Guin

To use the enemy's weapon is to play the enemy's game...speak the truth and hear the truth.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Was he leaving home, or going home?

Ursula K. Le Guin

The airport bookstore did not sell books, only bestsellers, which Sita Dulip cannot read without risking a severe systemic reaction.

Ursula K. Le Guin

There are talking dogs all over the place, unbelievably boring they are, on and on and on about sex and shit and smells, and smells and shit and sex, and do you love me, do you love me, do you love me.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Some dreams tell us what we wish to believe. Some dreams tell us what we fear. Some dreams are of what we know though we may not know we know it. The rarest dream is the dream that tells us what we have not known.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Without language, they have no lies. Thus they have no future.

Ursula K. Le Guin

In the airport, luggage-laden people rush hither and yon through endless corridors, like souls to each of whom the devil has furnished a different, inaccurate map of the escape route from hell.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Many people would have to hang by their teeth from a frayed cord suspended by a paper clip from a leaking hot air balloon over the Grand Canyon in order to feel what I feel standing on the third step of a stepladder trying to put millet in the bird f...

Ursula K. Le Guin

My species has a great many good reasons for making war, though none of them is as good as the reason for not making war.

Ursula K. Le Guin

...you play the instrument you have.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Oh, Hank," Susan whispered, "their wings are furry." "Oh, James," Harriet whispered, "their hands are kind.

Ursula K. Le Guin

The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.

Ursula K. Le Guin

The one thing a writer has to have is a pencil and some paper. That's enough, so long as she knows that she and she alone is in charge of that pencil, and responsible, she and she alone, for what it writes on that paper. In other words, that she's fr...

Ursula K. Le Guin

The natural, proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us.

Ursula K. Le Guin

If one believes that words are acts, as I do, then one must hold writers responsible for what their words do.

Ursula K. Le Guin

It is our suffering that brings us together. It is not love. Love does not obey the mind, and turns to hate when forced. The bond that binds us is beyond choice. We are brothers. We are brothers in what we share. In pain, which each of us must suffer...

Ursula K. Le Guin

Dead anarchists make martyrs, you know, and keep living for centuries. But absent ones can be forgotten.

Ursula K. Le Guin

To make a thief, make an owner; to create crime, create laws.

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

He tried to read an elementary economics text; it bored him past endurance, it was like listening to somebody interminably recounting a long and stupid dream. He could not force himself to understand how banks functioned and so forth, because all the...

Ursula K. Le Guin

Author Bio

  • NameUrsula K. Le Guin
  • DescriptionAmerican writer known best for speculative fiction
  • AliasesUrsula Kroeber
  • BornOctober 21, 1929
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionWriter; Screenwriter; Translator; Novelist; Poet
  • WorksEarthsea Series; Hainish Cycle
  • AwardsMargaret Edwards Award; Nebula Award; Prometheus Award - Hall Of Fame