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... the habit of literature [is] the best defense against believing the half-truths of ideologues and the lies of demagogues.

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
Lying
Demagogues
Half
Ideologues
Best
Truths
Believe
Believing
Defense
Lies
Habit
Literature

More quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin

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The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty not knowing what comes next.
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All makers must leave room for acts of the spirit.
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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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Truth, as ever, avoids the stranger.
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If you're a fiction writer, though, I can tell you how to let people talk through you. Listen. Just be quiet, and listen. Let the character talk. Don't censor, don't control. Listen, and write.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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When in the Land of Property think like a propertarian. Dress like one, eat like one, act like one, be one.
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All men were alien one to another, at times, not only aliens.
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Hate gets going, it goes round, it gets older and tighter and older and tighter, until it holds a person inside it like a fist holds a stick.
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Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge) by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee, and are therefore more honored in their day than prophets) and by futurologists (salaried). Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying.
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Success is somebody else's failure. Success is the American Dream we can keep dreaming because most people in most places, including thirty million of ourselves, live wide awake in the terrible reality of poverty.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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It is good to have an end to journey towards but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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To make a thief, make an owner to create crime, create laws.
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It's the self that suffers, and there's a place where the self--ceases. I don't know how to say it. But I believe that the reality--the truth that I recognize in suffering as I don't in comfort and happiness--that the reality of pain is not pain. If you can get through it. If you can endure it all the way.
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In innocence there is no strength against evil, said Sparrowhawk, a little wryly. But there is strength in it for good.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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I have become very critical of the whole book award system and could preach on that subject for quite a while, but I do know what an award can mean to a writer early in her career. It can give an essential validation.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Maybe when you meet the people you are supposed to meet you know it, without knowing it.
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Very seldom do you come upon a space, a time like this, between act and act, when you may stop and simply be.
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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
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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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To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.
Ursula K. Le Guin