Quote

Time has two aspects. There is the arrow, the running river, without which there is no change, no progress, or direction, or creation. And there is the circle or the cycle, without which there is chaos, meaningless succession of instants, a world without clocks or seasons or promises.

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
Time
Aspect
River
Arrows
World
Promise
Circles
Succession
Creation
Instant
Cycle
Progress
Clock
Cycles
Running
Seasons
Promises
Two
Chaos
Circle
Instants
Change
Direction
Aspects
Clocks
Without
Rivers
Meaningless
Arrow

More quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin

Image
One man may as easily destroy, as govern: be King or Anti-King.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
Fiction—and poetry and drama— cleanse the doors of perception.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
Whenever they tell me children want this sort of book and children need this sort of writing, I am going to smile politely and shut my earlids. I am a writer, not a caterer. There are plenty of caterers. But what children most want and need is what we and they don't know they want and don't think they need, and only writers can offer it to them.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
If they come prying they can leave curious.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
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
Image
I write with all my heart
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
Great self-destruction follows upon unfounded fear.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
Genre fiction was looked at as a ghetto, but I wonder now if realist fiction, sealing itself off in the glum suburbs of a dysfunctional society, denying the use of imagination, was the ghetto.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
Writers need to learn their trade, and how to negotiate the increasingly difficult marketplace. The trade can be taught and learned just as the craft can. But a workshop where the trade is the principal focus of interest is not a writing workshop. It is a business class.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
This is. And thou art. There is no safety. There is no end. The word must be heard in silence. There must be darkness to see the stars. The dance is always danced above the hollow place, above the terrible abyss.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
Nothing remains the same from one moment to the next, you can't step into the same river twice. Life--evolution--the whole universe of space/time, matter/energy--existence itself--is essentially change.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
I never knew anybody . . . who found life simple. I think a life or a time looks simple when you leave out the details.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
Hardly anybody ever writes anything nice about introverts. Extroverts rule. This is rather odd when you realise that about nineteen writers out of twenty are introverts. We are been taught to be ashamed of not being 'outgoing'. But a writer's job is ingoing.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
It's a rare gift, to know where you need to be, before you've been to all the places you don't need to be.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
Virginity is now a mere preamble or waiting room to be got out of as soon as possible it is without significance.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
Those who dislike fantasy are very often equally bored or repelled by science. They don't like either hobbits, or quasars they don't feel at home with them they don't want complexities, remoteness. If there is any such connection, I'll bet that it is basically an aesthetic one
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
The worst walls are never the ones you find in your way. The worst walls are the ones you put there .
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
The backside of heroism is often rather sad women and servants know that. They know also that the heroism may be no less real for that. But achievement is smaller than men think. What is large is the sky, the earth, the sea, the soul.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
What she needs, at least one thing she needs, is companionship. After all why should she eat? Who needs her to be alive? What we call psychosis is sometimes simply realism. But human beings can't live on realism alone.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
You cannot blame everything on the enemy.
Ursula K. Le Guin