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
Destructive
Merely
Except
Danger
Dysfunctional
Suffering
Psychologically
Bodily
Socially
Warning

More quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin

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Light is the left hand of darkness and darkness the right hand of light. Two are one, life and death, lying together like lovers in kemmer, like hands joined together, like the end and the way.
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We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable - but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.
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I had forgotten how much light there is in the world, till you gave it back to me.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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The same old hypocrisy. Life is a fight, and the strongest wins. All civilization does is hide the blood and cover up the hate with pretty words!
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Realism is a very sophisticated form of literature, a very grown-up one. And that may be its weakness. But fantasy seems to be eternal and omnipresent and always attractive to kids.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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No society can change the nature of existence. We can't prevent suffering. This pain and that pain, yes, but not Pain. A society can only relieve social suffering, unnecessary suffering. The rest remains. The root, the reality.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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There are no right answers to wrong questions.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Great artists make the roads good teachers and good companions can point them out. But there ain't no free rides, baby.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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To know there is a choice is to have to make the choice: change or stay: river or rock.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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This is. And thou art. There is no safety. There is no end. The word must be heard in silence. There must be darkness to see the stars. The dance is always danced above the hollow place, above the terrible abyss.
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.
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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What goes too long unchanged destroys itself.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Dreams take short cuts.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Art is craft: all art is always and essentially a work of craft: but in the true work of art, before the craft and after it, is some essential durable core of being, which is what the craft works on, and shows, and sets free. The statue in the stone. How does the artist find that, see it, before it's visible? That is a real question.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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And I speak of spiritual suffering! Of people seeing their talent, their work, their lives wasted. Of good minds submitting to stupid ones. Of strength and courage strangled by envy, greed for power, fear of change. Change is freedom, change is life
Ursula K. Le Guin
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...If at moments the facts seem to alter with an altered voice, why then you can choose the fact you like best yet none of them are false, and it is all one story.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Ignorant power is a bane!
Ursula K. Le Guin
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You must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Primitiveness and civilization are degrees of the same thing. If civilization has an opposite, it is war.
Ursula K. Le Guin