Quote

There is not much you can say about a baby unless you are talking with its father or another mother or nurse infants are not part of the realm of ordinary language, talk is inadequate to them as they are inadequate to talk.

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
Mother
Realms
Another
Ordinary
Part
Baby
Much
Unless
Infants
Talk
Inadequate
Talking
Infant
Language
Realm
Father
Nurse

More quotes by 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
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
Image
In general she had found that the main drawback in being a man was that conversations were less interesting.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty not knowing what comes next.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
Almost everything is double like that for adolescents their lies are true and their truths are lies, and their hearts are broken by the world. They gyre and fall they see through everything, and are blind.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
A man who saw a miracle would reject his eyes' witness, if those with him saw nothing.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
Writing makes no noise, except groans, and it can be done everywhere, and it is done alone.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
What is a body that casts no shadow? Nothing, a formlessness, two-dimensional, a comic-strip character. If I deny my own profound relationship with evil I deny my own reality. I cannot do, or make I can only undo, unmake.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
Primitiveness and civilization are degrees of the same thing. If civilization has an opposite, it is war.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
Where there's property, there's theft.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
Art and Entertainment are the same thing, in that the more deeply and genuinely entertaining a work is, the better art it is. To imply that Art is something heavy and solemn and dull, and Entertainment is modest but jolly and popular, is neo-Victorian idiocy at its worst.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
I write with all my heart
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
I hope you are never victims, but I hope you have no power over other people.
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 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
We decided that it was no good asking what is the meaning of life, because life isn't an answer, life is the question, and you, yourself, are the answer.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
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
Image
Do nothing because it is righteous or praiseworthy or noble to do so do nothing because it seems good to do so do only that which you must do and which you cannot do in any other way.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Image
There's seldom as much hurry as I used to think there was.
Ursula K. Le Guin