Quote

While we read a novel, we are insane—bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren't there, we hear their voices... Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.

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
Book
Aren
Believe
Return
People
Novel
Bonkers
Cases
Returns
Hear
Sanity
Existence
Closed
Read
Voices
Voice
Insane

More quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin

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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.
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When in the Land of Property think like a propertarian. Dress like one, eat like one, act like one, be one.
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The light is the left hand of darkness.
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Having one king, one god, one belief, they can act single-mindedly.
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Skill in writing frees you to write what you want to write. It may also show you what you want to write. Craft enables art.
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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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I don't want to be a propagandist, no matter how good the cause. I want to tell stories. It's just that the stories have to square with my consciousness as a woman and my conscience as a human being.
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We will not know our own injustice if we cannot imagine justice. We will not be free if we do not imagine freedom. We cannot demand that anyone try to attain justice and freedom who has not had a chance to imagine them as attainable.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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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.
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Only in silence the word, only in dark the light, only in dying life: bright the hawk's flight on the empty sky.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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There's a point, around the age of twenty, when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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When I'm writing I don't dream much it's like the dreaming gets used in the writing.
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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Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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If your voice is heard by more people because you've earned some kind of name and fame, your silence on an issue of urgent moral importance is even more of a betrayal. Privilege is obligation.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Belief in the lie is the life of the lie.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Art, like sex, cannot be carried on indefinitely solo after all, they have the same enemy, sterility.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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My world, my Earth is a ruin. A planet spoiled by the human species. We multiplied and fought and gobbled until there was nothing left, and then we died. We controlled neither appetite nor violence we did not adapt. We destroyed ourselves. But we destroyed the world first.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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There are dance artists, painting artists and writing artists. Authors are writing artists. You can practice art in whatever medium you choose, and words are mine.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I'm going to go fulfill my proper function in the social organism. I'm going to unbuild walls.
Ursula K. Le Guin