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

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.

Ursula K. Le Guin

The imagination is truly the enemy of bigotry and dogma.

Ursula K. Le Guin

If women had power, what would men be but women who can't bear children? And what would women be but men who can?...I mean, men give her [a queen] power. They let her use their power. But it isn't hers, is it? It isn't because she's a woman that she'...

Ursula K. Le Guin

In modern fantasy (literary or governmental), killing people is the usual solution to the so-called war between good and evil.

Ursula K. Le Guin

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...There is no strength to be gained from hurting one another. Only weak...

Ursula K. Le Guin

I know perfectly well he's a god, too. But what I think is he'll be much godlier after he's dead.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Fantasy is not antirational, but pararational; not realistic but surrealistic, a heightening of reality. In Freud's terminology, it employs primary not secondary process thinking. It employs archetypes which, as Jung warned us, are dangerous things. ...

Ursula K. Le Guin

So rest a while, we can talk in the cool of the evening. Or the cool of the morning. There 's seldom as much hurry as I used to think there was." -Hawk Who had been Archmage The Other Wind

Ursula K. Le Guin

A lot of people still maintain genre prejudice. I still meet matrons who tell me kindly that their children enjoyed my books but of course they never read them, and people who make sure I know they don’t read that space-ship stuff. No, no, they rea...

Ursula K. Le Guin

I don’t know which I should fear more . . . death or life. I wish I could be done with fear.

Ursula K. Le Guin

While we read a novel, we are insane—bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren't there, we hear their voices... Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.

Ursula K. Le Guin

The unknown...the unforetold, the unproven, that is what life is based on. Ignorance is the ground of thought...The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.

Ursula K. Le Guin

You always have to defend the imagination against idiots.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Independence was as far as his mind could reach. Yet I think his mind groped further, towards what he could not see, the body's obscure, inalterable dream of mutuality.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Gradually the healing took place, seeming as it always does that it wasn't taking place.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Sure, it's simple writing for kids…just as simple as bringing them up.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Literature is the extant body of written art. All novels belong to it. The value judgement concealed in distinguishing one novel as literature and another as genre vanishes with the distinction. Every readable novel can give true pleasure. Every nove...

Ursula K. Le Guin

El pesado ropón negro que llevaba desde hacía años había desaparecido; tenía ahora un vestido de seda color turquesa, brillante y delicado como el cielo del atardecer, acampanado en las caderas. Y la falda estaba toda bordada con finos hilos de ...

Ursula K. Le Guin

Civilized Man says: I am Self, I am Master, all the rest is other--outside, below, underneath, subservient. I own, I use, I explore, I exploit, I control. What I do is what matters. What I want is what matter is for. I am that I am, and the rest is w...

Ursula K. Le Guin

What good is music? None, Gage thought, and that is the point. To the world and its states and armies and factories and leaders, music says, ‘You are irrelevant’; and, arrogant and gentle as a god, to the suffering man it says only, ‘Listen.’...

Ursula K. Le Guin

Science Fiction properly conceived, like all serious fiction, however funny, is a way of trying to describe what is going on, what people actually do and feel, how people relate to everything else in this vast sack, this belly of the universe, this w...

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