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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
Writing
Wheel
Societies
Wheels
Library
Use
Tell
Stories
Great
Storyteller

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In innocence there is no strength against evil, said Sparrowhawk, a little wryly. But there is strength in it for good.
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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.
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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.
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I don't write tracts, I write novels. I'm not a preacher, I'm a fiction writer.
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What's needed in this case is conscious and serious practice in hearing, and using, and being used by, other people's voices.
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Alone, no one wins freedom.
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Paradise is for those who make paradise.
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A profound love between two people involves, after all, the power and chance of doing profound hurt.
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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.
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If it were proven that there is no God there would be no religion. ...But also if it were proven that there is a God, there would be no religion.
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The model of modern Western civilization is the virus: the pure bit of information, which turns its environment into endless reproductions of itself.
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Music is another way of thinking, or maybe thinking is another kind of music.
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Our model of the cosmos must be as inexhaustible as the cosmos. A complexity that includes not only duration but creation, not only being but becoming, not only geometry but ethics. It is not the answer we are after, but only how to ask the question.
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The world is in balance . To light a candle is to cast a shadow.
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Sleeping people are so remote.... Right here, but out of communication. That's what strikes humans as uncanny about sleep. Its utter privacy. The sleeper turns his back on everyone.
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The one thing a writer has to have is a pencil and some paper. That's enough, so long as she knows that she and she alone is in charge of that pencil, and responsible, she and she alone, for what it writes on that paper.
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Fire and fear, good servants, bad lords.
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The reason literacy is important is that literature is the operating instructions. The best manual we have. The most useful guide to the country we're visiting, life.
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I have never heard a dancer asking for advice about how to stay focused on her footwork, or a painter complaining about the dull day-to-day task of painting. What task worth doing isn't worth daily effort? Do you think Michelangelo was having fun the whole time he was on his back painting the Sistine Chapel's ceiling?
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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