Quote

Sometimes one's very angry and preaches, but I know that to clinch a point is to close it. To leave the reader free to decide what your work means, that's the real art it makes the work inexhaustible.

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
Work
Point
Clinch
Free
Preaches
Means
Inexhaustible
Makes
Decide
Art
Angry
Sometimes
Reader
Real
Close
Mean
Leave

More quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin

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Belief in heaven and hell is a big deal in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and some forms of doctrinaire Buddhism. For the rest of us it's simply meaningless. We don't live in order to die, we live in order to live.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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There's a point, around the age of twenty, when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Science fiction properly conceived, like all serious fiction, however funny, is a way of trying to describe what is in fact going on, what people actually do and feel, how people relate to everything else in this vast sack, this belly of the universe, this womb of things to be and tomb of things that were, this unending story.
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Ah, genre. A word only a Frenchman could love.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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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
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You must come to terms with your wholeself. the wholeness which exceeds all our virtue and all our vice.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Almost anything carried to a logical extreme becomes depressing.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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The notion that a story has a message assumes that it can be reduced to a few abstract words, neatly summarized in a school or college examination paper or a brisk critical review.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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The quality of the will to power is, precisely, growth. Achievement is its cancellation. To be, the will to power must increase with each fulfillment, making the fulfillment only a step to a further one. The vaster the power gained the vaster the appetite for more.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Between thought and spoken word is a gap where intention can enter, the symbol be twisted aside, and the lie come to be.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Nothing said in words ever came out quite even. Things in words got twisted and ran together, instead of staying straight and fitting together.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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There are very real differences between science fiction and realistic fiction, between horror and fantasy, between romance and mystery. Differences in writing them, in reading them, in criticizing them. Vive les différences! They're what gives each genre its singular flavor and savor, its particular interest for the reader - and the writer.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Sometimes you must go against the wheel's turn.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Ignorant power is a bane!
Ursula K. Le Guin
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I have no control over my writing. I have lots of good intentions, but no control. There's a story that wants to be told.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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In innocence there is no strength against evil, said Sparrowhawk, a little wryly. But there is strength in it for good.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Hope is a slow business.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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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
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Well, the secret to writing is writing. It's only a secret to people who don't want to hear it. Writing is how you be a writer.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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A scientist can pretend that his work isn't himself, it's merely the impersonal truth. An artist can't hide behind the truth. He can't hide anywhere.
Ursula K. Le Guin