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There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.

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
Great
Storyteller
Writing
Wheel
Societies
Wheels
Library
Use
Tell
Stories

More quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin

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He was appalled by the examination system, when it was explained to him, he could not imagine a greater detterent to the natural wish to learn than this pattern of cramming in information and disgorging it on demand.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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If you see a whole thing - it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives... But up close a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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I don't believe that a writer 'gets' (takes into the head) an 'idea' (some sort of mental object) 'from' somewhere, and then turns it into words, and writes them on paper. At least in my experience, it doesn't work that way. The stuff has to be transformed into oneself, it has to be composted, before it can grow into a story.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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The important thing is not the finding, it is the seeking, it is the devotion with which one spins the wheel of prayer and scripture, discovering the truth little by little.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty not knowing what comes next.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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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
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Scientific truth will out, you can't hide the sun under a stone.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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The pornography of violence of course far exceeds, in volume and general acceptance, sexual pornography, in this Puritan land of ours.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Greed puts out the sun.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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The machine conceals the machinations.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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To see that your life is a story while you're in the middle of living it may be a help to living it well.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Whenever they tell me children want this sort of book and children need this sort of writing, I am going to smile politely and shut my earlids. I am a writer, not a caterer. There are plenty of caterers. But what children most want and need is what we and they don't know they want and don't think they need, and only writers can offer it to them.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Most civilisations, perhaps, look shinier in general terms and from several light-years away.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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All knowledge is partial, infinitesimally partial. Reason is a net thrown out into an ocean. What truth it brings in is a fragment, a glimpse, a scintillation of the whole truth.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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You must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Despair speaks evenly, in a quiet voice.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Legends of prediction are common throughout the whole Household of Man. Gods speak, spirits speak, computers speak. Oracular ambiguity or statistical probability provides loopholes, and discrepancies are expunged by Faith.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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A scientist can pretend that his work isn't himself, it's merely the impersonal truth. An artist can't hide behind the truth. He can't hide anywhere.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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The old knowledge had been difficult but not distressing. It had been all paradox and myth, and it had made sense. The new knowledge was all fact and reason, and it made no sense.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Life goes on, even if two-headed and glowing faintly in the dark.
Ursula K. Le Guin