Quote

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

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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
Hard
Choices
Towards
Great
Freedom
Heavy
Made
Easy
Road
Undertake
Never
Given
Gift
Upward
Spirit
Reach
Laden
Ends
Choice
Traveler
Light
Strange
Load
May
Goes
Burden

More quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin

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The hunger of a dragon is slow to wake, but hard to sate.
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No society can change the nature of existence. We can't prevent suffering. This pain and that pain, yes, but not Pain. A society can only relieve social suffering, unnecessary suffering. The rest remains. The root, the reality.
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Do you see, Arren, how an act is not, as young men think, like a rock that one picks up and throws, and it hits or misses, and that's the end of it. When that rock is lifted, the earth is lighter the hand that bears it is heavier. When it is thrown, the circuits of the stars respond, and where it strikes or falls the universe is changed.
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We like to think we live in daylight, but half the world is always dark, and fantasy, like poetry, speaks the language of the night.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Readers, after all, are making the world with you. You give them the materials, but it's the readers who build that world in their own minds.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Morality is an utterly meaningless term unless defined as the good one does to others, the fulfilling of one's function in the sociopolitical whole.
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Darkness is only in the mortal eye, that thinks it sees, but sees not.
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A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it... By using words well they strengthen their souls.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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My Real Children starts quietly, then suddenly takes you on two roller-coaster rides at once, swooping dizzily through a double panorama and ending in a sort of super Sophie's Choice. A daring tour de force.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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And I speak of spiritual suffering! Of people seeing their talent, their work, their lives wasted. Of good minds submitting to stupid ones. Of strength and courage strangled by envy, greed for power, fear of change. Change is freedom, change is life
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Without war there are no heroes. What harm would that be? Oh, Lavinia, what a woman's question that is.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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To me the female principle is, or at least historically has been, basically anarchic. It values order without constraint, rule by custom not by force. It has been the male who enforces order, who constructs power structures, who makes, enforces, and breaks laws.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Oh, never and forever aren't for mortals, love. But we won't be parted till I know it's right that we part.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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It is very hard for evil to take hold of the unconsenting soul.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Is it the gods who set this fire in our hearts, or do we each make our fierce desire into a god?
Ursula K. Le Guin
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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
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The thing about working with time, instead of against it, he thought, is that it is not wasted. Even pain counts.
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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Do you know how to read? No. It is one of the black arts. He nodded. But a useful one, he said.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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I am living in a nightmare, from which from time to time I wake in sleep.
Ursula K. Le Guin