Quote

The artist deals with what cannot be said in words. The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.

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
Deals
Fiction
Says
Words
Novelist
Artist
Novelists
Cannot
Medium
Doe
Mediums
Whose

More quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin

Image
I have become very critical of the whole book award system and could preach on that subject for quite a while, but I do know what an award can mean to a writer early in her career. It can give an essential validation.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
In war everybody is a prisoner.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge) by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee, and are therefore more honored in their day than prophets) and by futurologists (salaried). Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
But it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
Sure, it's simple, writing for kids... Just as simple as bringing them up.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
Where there's property, there's theft.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
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
Image
The individual cannot bargain with the State. The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coins itself.
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
Dragons are more dangerous, and a good deal commoner, than bears. Fantasy is nearer to poetry, to mysticism, and to insanity than naturalistic fiction is. It is a real wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
Belief in the lie is the life of the lie.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
Gradually the healing took place, seeming as it always does that it wasn't taking place.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
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
Image
Fiction—and poetry and drama— cleanse the doors of perception.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
In the tale, in the telling, we are all one blood. Take the tale in your teeth, then, and bite till the blood runs, hoping it's not poison and we will all come to the end together, and even to the beginning: living, as we do, in the middle.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
It is of the nature of idea to be communicated: written, spoken, done. The idea is like grass. It craves light, likes crowds, thrives on crossbreeding, grows better for being stepped on.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
Almost anything carried to a logical extreme becomes depressing.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
The bond between true lovers is as close as we come to what endures forever.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
Progress means nothing to presence.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
Children know perfectly well that unicorns aren’t real, but they also know that books about unicorns, if they are good books, are true books.
Ursula K. Le Guin