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The reason literacy is important is that literature is the operating instructions. The best manual we have. The most useful guide to the country we're visiting, life.
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
Literature
Manuals
Reading
Operating
Best
Visiting
Reason
Literacy
Country
Instruction
Important
Guide
Life
Guides
Manual
Useful
Instructions
More quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin
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.
Ursula K. Le Guin
You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.
Ursula K. Le Guin
When the enemy enthusiastically embraces you, and the fellow countrymen bitterly reject you, it is hard not to wonder if you are, in fact, a traitor.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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
To claim power over what you do not understand is not wise, nor is the end of it likely to be good.
Ursula K. Le Guin
He was appalled by the examination system, when it was explained to him, he could not imagine a greater detterent to the natural wish to learn than this pattern of cramming in information and disgorging it on demand.
Ursula K. Le Guin
That I was not dueling with the king, but trying to communicate with him, was itself an incommunicable fact.
Ursula K. Le Guin
But you must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A wizard's power of Changing and Summoning can shake the balance of the world. It is dangerous, that power...It must follow knowledge, and serve need.
Ursula K. Le Guin
What is more arrogant than honesty?
Ursula K. Le Guin
Age and illness made one a dualist
Ursula K. Le Guin
A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it... By using words well they strengthen their souls.
Ursula K. Le Guin
I don't write tracts, I write novels. I'm not a preacher, I'm a fiction writer.
Ursula K. Le Guin
I'd rather get bad news from an honest man than lies from a flatterer.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Manipulated, one manipulates others.
Ursula K. Le Guin
I don't want to be a propagandist, no matter how good the cause. I want to tell stories. It's just that the stories have to square with my consciousness as a woman and my conscience as a human being.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Any artist must expect to work amid the total, rational indifference of everybody else to their work, for years, perhaps for life.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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?
Ursula K. Le Guin
A man does not make his destiny: he accepts it or denies it.
Ursula K. Le Guin
A wrong that cannot be repaired must be transcended.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Virginity is now a mere preamble or waiting room to be got out of as soon as possible it is without significance. Old age is similarly a waiting room, where you go after life's over and wait for cancer or a stroke. The years before and after the menstrual years are vestigial: the only meaningful condition left to women is that of fruitfulness.
Ursula K. Le Guin