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

More quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin

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At this point, realism is perhaps the least adequate means of understanding or portraying the incredible realities of our existence.
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I have never heard a dancer asking for advice about how to stay focused on her footwork, or a painter complaining about the dull day-to-day task of painting. What task worth doing isn't worth daily effort? Do you think Michelangelo was having fun the whole time he was on his back painting the Sistine Chapel's ceiling?
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No darkness lasts forever. And even there, there are stars.
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Truth, as ever, avoids the stranger.
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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.
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there are times when you have to speak because silence is betrayal.
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Paradise is for those who make paradise.
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The hunger of a dragon is slow to wake, but hard to sate.
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And though I came to forget or regret all I have ever done, yet would I remember that once I saw the dragons aloft on the wind at sunset above the western isles and I would be content.
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If science fiction is the mythology of modern technology, then its myth is tragic.
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You sit down and you do it, and you do it, and you do it, until you have learned to do it.
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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?
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Fantasy is probably the oldest literary device for talking about reality.
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George, it's impossible to correct a defective reality-orientation overnight.
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I doubt that the imagination can be suppressed. If you truly eradicated it in a child, he would grow up to be an eggplant.
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The old knowledge had been difficult but not distressing. It had been all paradox and myth, and it had made sense. The new knowledge was all fact and reason, and it made no sense.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Those who dislike fantasy are very often equally bored or repelled by science. They don't like either hobbits, or quasars they don't feel at home with them they don't want complexities, remoteness. If there is any such connection, I'll bet that it is basically an aesthetic one
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The creative adult is the child who has survived.
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I came into science fiction at a very good time, when the doors were getting thrown open to all kinds of more experimental writing, more literary writing, riskier writing. It wasn't all imitation Heinlein or Asimov. And of course, women were creeping in, infiltrating. Infesting the premises.
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Literacy is so you can read the operating instructions.
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