Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Artist
Terrible
Treason
Something
Stupid
Refusal
Trouble
Encouraged
Interesting
Considering
Happiness
Boredom
Rather
Admit
Pendants
Evil
Intellectual
Pedants
Pain
Habit
Banality

More quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin

Image
He knew now, and the knowledge was hard, that his task had never been to undo what he had done, but to finish what he had begun.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
Fiction—and poetry and drama— cleanse the doors of perception.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
Life goes on, even if two-headed and glowing faintly in the dark.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
What is love of one's country is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing. Is it simply self-love? That's a good thing, but one musn't make a virtue of it, or a profession...Insofar as I love life, I love [my country], but that sort of love does not have a boundary-line of hate. And beyond that, I am ignorant, I hope.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
Fake realism is the escapist literature of our time. And probably the ultimate escapist reading is that masterpiece of total unreality, the daily stock market report.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
It is a real wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
Great artists make the roads good teachers and good companions can point them out. But there ain't no free rides, baby.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
Paradise is for those who make paradise.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
We read books to find out who we are.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
A writer either speaks to adults and bores kids, or speaks to kids and upsets adults.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
There is no kingdom like the forests.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
How can people be anything but ignorant when knowledge isn't saved, isn't taught?
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
At this point, realism is perhaps the least adequate means of understanding or portraying the incredible realities of our existence.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
Having one king, one god, one belief, they can act single-mindedly.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
The machine conceals the machinations.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
A man wants his virility regarded. A woman wants her femininity appreciated, however indirect and subtle the indications of regard and appreciation. [Here] one is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
The question is always the same with a dragon: will he talk with you or will he eat you?
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
Primitiveness and civilization are degrees of the same thing. If civilization has an opposite, it is war.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
When we're done with it, we may find—if it's a good novel—that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have been changed a little, as if by having meet a new face, crossed a street we've never crossed before.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
I think what's happening is, it's all - fantasy, science fiction, ghosts, trolls, whatever - finally being called, being admitted to be literature. The way it used to be, before the Realists and the bloody Modernists took over.
Ursula K. Le Guin