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Truth is a matter of the imagination. The soundest fact may fail or prevail in the style of its telling: like that singular organic jewel of our seas, which grows brighter as one woman wears it and, worn by another, dulls and goes to dust.

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
Matter
Imagination
Worn
Jewel
Like
Grows
Dust
Singular
Fact
Fail
Seas
Woman
Telling
Prevail
Facts
Sea
Wears
Another
Failing
Jewels
Truth
Style
Brighter
Soundest
May
Goes
Organic
Dulls

More quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin

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Sometimes I not only stand there and take it, I even smile at them and say I'm sorry. When I feel that smile coming onto my face, I wish I could take my face off and stamp on it.
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The great authors share their souls with us- literally.
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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.
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Truth is a matter of the imagination.
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Love is the true condition of human life.
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If a book told you something when you were fifteen, it will tell you it again when you're fifty, though you may understand it so differently that it seems you're reading a whole new book.
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Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.
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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.
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The machine conceals the machinations.
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When the enemy enthusiastically embraces you, and the fellow countrymen bitterly reject you, it is hard not to wonder if you are, in fact, a traitor.
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I think what's happening is, it's all - fantasy, science fiction, ghosts, trolls, whatever - finally being called, being admitted to be literature. The way it used to be, before the Realists and the bloody Modernists took over.
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To claim power over what you do not understand is not wise, nor is the end of it likely to be good.
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Art, like sex, cannot be carried on indefinitely solo after all, they have the same enemy, sterility.
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But it doesn't take a thousand men to open a door, my lord. It might to keep it open.
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This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.
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What goes too long unchanged destroys itself.
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The desire for power feeds off itself, growing as it devours.
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In the airport, luggage-laden people rush hither and yon through endless corridors, like souls to each of whom the devil has furnished a different, inaccurate map of the escape route from hell.
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But it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them.
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I have never heard a dancer asking for advice about how to stay focused on her footwork, or a painter complaining about the dull day-to-day task of painting. What task worth doing isn't worth daily effort? Do you think Michelangelo was having fun the whole time he was on his back painting the Sistine Chapel's ceiling?
Ursula K. Le Guin