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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

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Ursula K. Le Guin
Age: 88 †
Born: 1929
Born: October 21
Died: 2018
Died: January 22
Author
Feminist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Poet
Prosaist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Translator
Writer
Berkeley
California
Ursula Kroeber
Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
Feels
Understanding
Thyself
Real
Read
Imaginary
Inspirational
Guide
Think
Become
Guides
Thinking
May
Essential
People
Find
Essentials
Book
Discovery
Feel
Books

More quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin

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A wrong that cannot be repaired must be transcended.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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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
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The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Even a poet cannot get everything right.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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The living tongue that tells the word, the living ear that hears it, bind and bond us in the communion we long for in the silence of our inner solitude.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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If civilization has an opposite, it is war. Of these two things, you have either one, or the other. Not both.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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That I was not dueling with the king, but trying to communicate with him, was itself an incommunicable fact.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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I have become very critical of the whole book award system and could preach on that subject for quite a while, but I do know what an award can mean to a writer early in her career. It can give an essential validation.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Light is the left hand of darkness and darkness the right hand of light. Two are one, life and death, lying together like lovers in kemmer, like hands joined together, like the end and the way.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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It is yin and yang. Light is the left hand of darkness ... how did it go? Light, dark. Fear, courage. Cold, warmth. Female, male. It is yourself ... both and one. A shadow on snow.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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To claim power over what you do not understand is not wise, nor is the end of it likely to be good.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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If success in selling is my primary interest, I am not primarily a writer, but a salesperson. If I teach success in selling as the writer's primary objective, I am not teaching writing I'm teaching, or pretending to teach, the production and marketing of a commodity.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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In general she had found that the main drawback in being a man was that conversations were less interesting.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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I always wondered why the makers leave housekeeping and cooking out of their tales. Isn't it what all the great wars and battles are fought for -- so that at day's end a family may eat together in a peaceful house?
Ursula K. Le Guin
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I've got some gift for languages. You follow your gift. But Latin's not easy.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Go to bed tired is stupid.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Revolution is our obligation: our hope of evolution.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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When action grows unprofitable, gather information when information grows unprofitable, sleep.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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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.
Ursula K. Le Guin