Ursula K. Le Guin quotes

Ursula K. Le Guin was a celebrated American author known for her extraordinary contributions to the science fiction and fantasy genres. With a career spanning over six decades, Le Guin authored numerous novels, short stories, poetry, and essays that continue to captivate readers worldwide. Her works explored complex themes such as gender, society, and the balance between individualism and community. Le Guin's most renowned novels include "The Left Hand of Darkness" and the Earthsea series, both hailed for their imaginative world-building and thought-provoking narratives. Her impressive literary legacy earned her numerous awards, including multiple Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards. Le Guin's knack for creating richly diverse and empathetic characters, coupled with her masterful storytelling, sets her apart as one of the greatest authors of her generation. Explore the captivating worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin and experience the boundless depths of her visionary storytelling.

We're each of us alone, to be sure. What can you do but hold your hand out in the dark?

- Ursula K. Le Guin

People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.

- Ursula K. Le Guin

The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.

- Ursula K. Le Guin

When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.

- Ursula K. Le Guin

Truth is a matter of the imagination.

- Ursula K. Le Guin

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 artist deals with what cannot be said in words. The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.

- Ursula K. Le Guin

No, I don't mean love, when I say patriotism. I mean fear. The fear of the other. And its expressions are political, not poetical: hate, rivalry, aggression.

- Ursula K. Le Guin

It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.

- Ursula K. Le Guin

If civilization has an opposite, it is war.

- Ursula K. Le Guin

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. The only truth I can understand or express is, logically defined, a lie. Psychologically defined, a symbol. Aesthetically defined, a metaphor.

- Ursula K. Le Guin

Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth.

- Ursula K. Le Guin

A profound love between two people involves, after all, the power and chance of doing profound hurt.

- Ursula K. Le Guin

A man wants his virility regarded. A woman wants her femininity appreciated, however indirect and subtle the indications of regard and appreciation.

- Ursula K. Le Guin

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

When you light a candle, you also cast a shadow.

- Ursula K. Le Guin

We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.

- Ursula K. Le Guin

Nobody who says, ‘I told you so’ has ever been, or will ever be, a hero.

- Ursula K. Le Guin

A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.

- Ursula K. Le Guin

Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.

- Ursula K. Le Guin

There are no right answers to wrong questions.

- Ursula K. Le Guin

The only questions that really matter are the ones you ask yourself.

- Ursula K. Le Guin

There's a good deal in common between the mind's eye and the TV screen, and though the TV set has all too often been the boobtube, it could be, it can be, the box of dreams.

- Ursula K. Le Guin

It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end.

- Ursula K. Le Guin

Morning comes whether you set the alarm or not.

- Ursula K. Le Guin

I doubt that the imagination can be suppressed. If you truly eradicated it in a child, he would grow up to be an eggplant.

- Ursula K. Le Guin

Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.

- Ursula K. Le Guin

It had never occurred to me before that music and thinking are so much alike. In fact you could say music is another way of thinking, or maybe thinking is another kind of music.

- Ursula K. Le Guin

The creative adult is the child who has survived.

- 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