Quote

Suffering is dysfunctional, except as a bodily warning against danger. Psychologically and socially it's merely destructive.

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
Socially
Warning
Destructive
Merely
Except
Danger
Dysfunctional
Suffering
Psychologically
Bodily

More quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin

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What is the use trying to describe the flowing of a river at any one moment, and then at the next moment, and then at the next, and the next, and the next? You wear out. You say: There is a great river, and it flows through this land, and we have named it History.
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Can true function arise from basic dysfunction?
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The label YA actually means nothing except that the protagonists, or some of them, are young. Publishers like it because it is a secure marketing niche. But the cost of security is exclusion from literary consideration.
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There are souls, he thought, whose umbilicus has never been cut. They never got weaned from the universe. They do not understand death as an enemy they look forward to rotting and turning into humus.
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Artists are people who are not at all interested in the facts - only in the truth.
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There are two kinds of knowledge, local and universal.
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The fish in the creek said nothing. Fish never do. Few people know what fish think about injustice, or anything else.
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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.
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As a kitten does what all other kittens do, so a child wants to do what other children do, with a wanting that is as powerful as it is mindless. Since we human beings have to learn what we do, we have to start out that way, but human mindfulness begins where that wish to be the same leaves off.
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If you want your writing to be taken seriously, don't marry and have kids, and above all, don't die. But if you have to die, commit suicide. They approve of that.
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It is hard to swear when sex is not dirty and blasphemy does not exist.
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Secondhand experience breaks down a block from the car lot.
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A man wants his virility regarded. A woman wants her femininity appreciated, however indirect and subtle the indications of regard and appreciation. [Here] one is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience.
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It is not human to be without shame and without desire.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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My soul is ten thousand miles wide and extremely invisibly deep. It is the same size as the sea, and you cannot, you cannot cram it into beer cans and fingernails and stake it out in lots and own it. It will drown you all and never even notice.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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And I needed a rock. Something to hold onto, to stand on. Something solid. Because everything was going soft, turning into mush, into marsh, into fog. Fog closing in on all sides. I didn't know where I was at all.
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Those who build walls are their own prisoners.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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But it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them.
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Owning is owing, having is hoarding.
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A dangerous book will always be in danger from those it threatens with the demand that they question their assumptions. They'd rather hang on to the assumptions and ban the book.
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