Quote

Dragons are more dangerous, and a good deal commoner, than bears. Fantasy is nearer to poetry, to mysticism, and to insanity than naturalistic fiction is. It is a real wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe.

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
Deals
Dragons
Fiction
Insanity
Dangerous
Wilderness
Feel
Fantasy
Commoner
Feels
Bears
Commoners
Real
Poetry
Naturalistic
Good
Safe
Nearer
Deal
Mysticism

More quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin

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In so far as one denies what is, one is possessed by what is not, the compulsions, the fantasies, the terrors that flock to fill the void.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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I talk about the gods, I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth.
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If science fiction is the mythology of modern technology, then its myth is tragic.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Nobody who says, ‘I told you so’ has ever been, or will ever be, a hero.
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A forest ecology is a delicate one. If the forest perishes, its fauna may go with it. The Athshean word for world is also the word for forest.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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The use of imaginative fiction is to deepen your understanding of your world, and your fellow men, and your own feelings, and your destiny.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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It did not matter, after all. He was only one man. One man's fate is not important. If it is not, what is? He could not endure those remembered words.
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It is hard, I found, to be called traitor. Strange how hard it is, for it's an easy name to call another man.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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As a man's real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing,but does only and wholly what he must do.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Other people's stories may become part of your own, the foundation of it, the ground it goes on.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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For a fiction writer, a storyteller, the world is full of stories, and when a story is there, it's there, and you just reach up and pick it.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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What is an anarchist? One who, choosing, accepts the responsibility of choice.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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The backside of heroism is often rather sad women and servants know that. They know also that the heroism may be no less real for that. But achievement is smaller than men think. What is large is the sky, the earth, the sea, the soul.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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The notion that a story has a message assumes that it can be reduced to a few abstract words, neatly summarized in a school or college examination paper or a brisk critical review.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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My world, my Earth is a ruin. A planet spoiled by the human species. We multiplied and fought and gobbled until there was nothing left, and then we died. We controlled neither appetite nor violence we did not adapt. We destroyed ourselves. But we destroyed the world first.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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In general she had found that the main drawback in being a man was that conversations were less interesting.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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The future has become uninhabitable. Such hopelessness can arise, I think, only from an inability to face the present, to live in the present, to live as a responsible being among other beings in this sacred world here and now, which is all we have, and all we need, to found our hope upon.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Is it the gods who set this fire in our hearts, or do we each make our fierce desire into a god?
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Belief in heaven and hell is a big deal in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and some forms of doctrinaire Buddhism. For the rest of us it's simply meaningless. We don't live in order to die, we live in order to live.
Ursula K. Le Guin