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It was men's ambitions, they said, that had perverted all the arts to ends of gain.

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
Ambition
Art
Ends
Men
Perverted
Ambitions
Arts
Gain
Gains

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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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I've got some gift for languages. You follow your gift. But Latin's not easy.
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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.
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Who knows a man's name, holds that man's life in his keeping. Thus to Ged, who had lost faith in himself, Vetch had given him that gift that only a friend can give, the proof of unshaken, unshakeable trust.
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Excess is excrement, ... Excrement retained in the body is a poison.
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It's not a weapon or a woman can make a man, or magery either, or any power, anything but himself.
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The artist deals with what cannot be said in words.
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Writers have to get used to launching something beautiful and watching it crash and burn. They also have to learn when to let go control, when the work takes off on its own and flies, farther than they ever planned or imagined, to places they didn't know they knew.
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There's a good deal in common between the mind's eye and the TV screen, and though the TV set has all too often been the boobtube, it could be, it can be, the box of dreams.
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What's needed in this case is conscious and serious practice in hearing, and using, and being used by, other people's voices.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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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
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Writing makes no noise, except groans, and it can be done everywhere, and it is done alone.
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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Scientific truth will out, you can't hide the sun under a stone.
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The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty not knowing what comes next.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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When action grows unprofitable, gather information when information grows unprofitable, sleep.
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The only questions that really matter are the ones you ask yourself.
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I think the mystery of art lies in this, that artists’ relationship is essentially with their work — not with power, not with profit, not with themselves, not even with their audience.
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Our model of the cosmos must be as inexhaustible as the cosmos. A complexity that includes not only duration but creation, not only being but becoming, not only geometry but ethics. It is not the answer we are after, but only how to ask the question.
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She had always known that all lives are in common, rejoicing in her kinship to the fish in the tanks of her laboratories, seeking the experience of existences outside the human boundary.
Ursula K. Le Guin