Quote

We scarcely know how much of our pleasure and interest in life comes to us through our eyes until we have to do without them and part of that pleasure is that the eyes can choose where to look. But the ears can't choose where to listen.

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
Eye
Comes
Scarcely
Part
Ears
Look
Choose
Without
Listen
Looks
Eyes
Much
Pleasure
Life
Interest

More quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin

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Well, the secret to writing is writing. It's only a secret to people who don't want to hear it. Writing is how you be a writer.
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The label YA actually means nothing except that the protagonists, or some of them, are young. Publishers like it because it is a secure marketing niche. But the cost of security is exclusion from literary consideration.
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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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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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The misogyny that shapes every aspect of our civilization is the institutionalized form of male fear and hatred of what they have denied and therefore cannot know, cannot share: that wild country, the being of women.
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At this point, realism is perhaps the least adequate means of understanding or portraying the incredible realities of our existence.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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The same old hypocrisy. Life is a fight, and the strongest wins. All civilization does is hide the blood and cover up the hate with pretty words!
Ursula K. Le Guin
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To exhibit the perfect uselessness of knowing the answer to the wrong question.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Excess is excrement, ... Excrement retained in the body is a poison.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Men who fight wars in winter don't live till spring.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Truth is a matter of the imagination.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Fire and fear, good servants, bad lords.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Other people's stories may become part of your own, the foundation of it, the ground it goes on.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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As a kitten does what all other kittens do, so a child wants to do what other children do, with a wanting that is as powerful as it is mindless. Since we human beings have to learn what we do, we have to start out that way, but human mindfulness begins where that wish to be the same leaves off.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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The machine conceals the machinations.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Alone, no one wins freedom.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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To be oneself is a rare thing, and a great one.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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The story is not in the plot but in the telling.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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When the genuine myth rises into consciousness, that is always its message. You must change your life.
Ursula K. Le Guin