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He knew now, and the knowledge was hard, that his task had never been to undo what he had done, but to finish what he had begun.

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
Knew
Knowledge
Done
Hard
Undo
Never
Begun
Finish
Task
Tasks

More quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin

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To oppose something is to maintain it... You must go somewhere else you must have another goal then you walk a different road.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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All times are changing times, but ours is one of massive, rapid moral and mental transformation. Archetypes turn into millstones, large simplicities get complicated, chaos becomes elegant, and what everybody knows is true turns out to be what some people used to think.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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The law of evolution is that the strongest survives!' 'Yes, and the strongest, in the existence of any social species, are those who are most social. In human terms, most ethical...There is no strength to be gained from hurting one another. Only weakness.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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It is good to have an end to journey towards but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
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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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
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When you work in form, be it a sonnet or villanelle or whatever, the form is there and you have to fill it. And you have to find how to make that form say what you want to say. But what you find, always--I think any poet who's worked in form will agree with me--is that the form leads you to what you want to say.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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No darkness lasts forever. And even there, there are stars.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Fake realism is the escapist literature of our time. And probably the ultimate escapist reading is that masterpiece of total unreality, the daily stock market report.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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You cannot blame everything on the enemy.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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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.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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You have to help another person. But it's not right to play God with masses of people. To be God you have to know what you're doing. And to do any good at all, just believing you're right and your motives are good isn't enough.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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We read books to find out who we are.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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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
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Go to bed tired is stupid.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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You can go home again...so long as you understand that home is a place where you have never been.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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By and large books are mankind's best invention.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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But it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Any artist must expect to work amid the total, rational indifference of everybody else to their work, for years, perhaps for life.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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You can’t crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them. By refusing to think, refusing to change.
Ursula K. Le Guin