American author (1929- )
Suffering is dysfunctional, except as a bodily warning against danger. Psychologically and socially it's merely destructive.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Dispossessed
Genre fiction was looked at as a ghetto, but I wonder now if realist fiction, sealing itself off in the glum suburbs of a dysfunctional society, denying the use of imagination, was the ghetto.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
interview, Salon, November 17, 2014
When in the Land of Property think like a propertarian. Dress like one, eat like one, act like one, be one.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Dispossessed
To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Left Hand of Darkness
Where there's property, there's theft.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Dispossessed
So the first step out of childhood is made all at once, without looking before or behind, without caution, and nothing held in reserve.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Farthest Shore
Young he was not, so that one had to call him old, but the word did not suit him.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Farthest Shore
I came into science fiction at a very good time, when the doors were getting thrown open to all kinds of more experimental writing, more literary writing, riskier writing. It wasn't all imitation Heinlein or Asimov. And of course, women were creeping in, infiltrating. Infesting the premises.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
interview, The Paris Review, fall 2013
You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Dispossessed
The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Lathe of Heaven
For fantasy is true, of course. It isn't factual, but it is true. Children know that. Adults know it too, and that is precisely why many of them are afraid of fantasy. They know that its truth challenges, even threatens, all that is false, all that is phony, unnecessary, and trivial in the life they have let themselves be forced into living. They are afraid of dragons, because they are afraid of freedom.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction
In so far as one denies what is, one is possessed by what is not, the compulsions, the fantasies, the terrors that flock to fill the void.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Lathe of Heaven
Ah, genre. A word only a Frenchman could love.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
interview, Salon, November 17, 2014
The book itself is a curious artifact, not showy in its technology but complex and extremely efficient: a really neat little device, compact, often very pleasant to look at and handle, that can last decades, even centuries. It doesn't have to be plugged in, activated, or performed by a machine; all it needs is light, a human eye, and a human mind. It is not one of a kind, and it is not ephemeral. It lasts. It is reliable. If a book told you something when you were fifteen, it will tell it to you again when you're fifty, though you may understand it so differently that it seems you're reading a whole new book.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
"Staying Awake: Notes on the alleged decline of reading", Harper's Magazine, February 2008
Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Tombs of Atuan
It always seemed to me they're sort of alike ... magic and music. Spells and tunes. For one thing, you have to get them just exactly right.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Tales from Earthsea
Sometimes a god comes.... He brings a new way to do a thing, or a new thing to be done. A new kind of singing, or a new kind of death. He brings this across the bridge between the dream-time and the world-time. When he has done this, it is done. You cannot take things that exist in the world and try to drive them back into the dream, to hold them inside the dream with walls and pretenses. That is insanity. What is, is. There is no use pretending, now, that we do not know how to kill one another.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Word for World is Forest
Wrongs done could not be righted, but at least they were not still being done.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Word for World is Forest
I talk about the gods, I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
introduction, The Left Hand of Darkness
What is an anarchist? One who, choosing, accepts the responsibility of choice.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Wind's Twelve Quarters