Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Thinking
Dark
Like
Half
World
Language
Speak
Night
Daylight
Live
Speaks
Always
Fantasy
Think
Poetry

More quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin

Image
To know there is a choice is to have to make the choice: change or stay: river or rock.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
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.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
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.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
Hate gets going, it goes round, it gets older and tighter and older and tighter, until it holds a person inside it like a fist holds a stick.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
Crankish attacks on the freedom to read are common at present. When backed and coordinated by organized groups, they become sinister.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it is like anything else
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
The literature of the emperor penguin is as forbidding, as inaccessible, as the frozen heart of Antarctica itself. Its beauties may be unearthly, but they are not for us.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
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
Image
Have you never thought how danger must surround power as shadow does light?
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
The historic function of a Senator from Oregon is to drive all the other Senators mad.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
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
Image
Realism is a very sophisticated form of literature, a very grown-up one. And that may be its weakness. But fantasy seems to be eternal and omnipresent and always attractive to kids.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
It is a terrible thing, this kindess that human beings do not lose. Terrible, because when we are finally naked in the dark and cold, it is all we have. We who are so rich, so full of strength, we end up with that small change. We have nothing else to give.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
If I had to pick a hero, it would be Charles Darwin--the size of his mind, which included all that scientific curiosity and knowledge seeking, and the ability to put it all together. There is a genuine spirituality about Darwin's thinking.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
Happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive. In the middle category, however - that of the unnecessary but undestructive, that of comfort, luxury, exuberance, etc
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
I can never get used to the fact, though I know it, that women are born cynics. Men have to learn cynicism. Infant girls could teach it to them.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
Having one king, one god, one belief, they can act single-mindedly.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
Literacy is so you can read the operating instructions.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
A wrong that cannot be repaired must be transcended.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
But need alone is not enough to set power free: there must be knowledge.
Ursula K. Le Guin