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Art and Entertainment are the same thing, in that the more deeply and genuinely entertaining a work is, the better art it is. To imply that Art is something heavy and solemn and dull, and Entertainment is modest but jolly and popular, is neo-Victorian idiocy at its worst.

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
Heavy
Genuinely
Worst
Solemn
Art
Modest
Better
Entertaining
Thing
Dull
Idiocy
Work
Popular
Jolly
Something
Deeply
Imply
Entertainment
Victorian

More quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin

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Death and life are the same thing-like the two sides of my hand, the palm and the back. And still the palm and the back are not the same...They can be neither separated, nor mixed.
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Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings
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The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.
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Besides, when you say you're a feminist it annoys the bigots and the old farts and the prissy ladies so much, it's kind of irresistible.
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Living, being in the world, was a much greater and stranger thing than she had ever dreamed.
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In our loss and fear we craved the acts of religion, the ceremonies that allow us to admit our helplessness, our dependence on the great forces we do not understand.
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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.
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If one believes that words are acts, as I do, then one must hold writers responsible for what their words do.
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To think that realistic fiction is by definition superior to imaginative fiction is to think imitation is superior to invention.
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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.
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Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art - the art of words.
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If you deny any affinity with another person or kind of person, if you declare it to be wholly different from yourself
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Elegance is a small price to pay for enlightenment, and I was glad to pay it.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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But it doesn't take a thousand men to open a door, my lord. It might to keep it open.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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I do try to separate my personal activism - showing up at a demonstration or something - from what I write.
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If civilization has an opposite, it is war.
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Civilized Man says: I am Self, I am Master, all the rest is other--outside, below, underneath, subservient. I own, I use, I explore, I exploit, I control. What I do is what matters. What I want is what matter is for. I am that I am, and the rest is women & wilderness, to be used as I see fit.
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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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The explorer who will not come back or send back his ships to tell his tale is not an explorer, only an adventurer and his sons are born in exile.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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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.
Ursula K. Le Guin