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The literature of the emperor penguin is as forbidding, as inaccessible, as the frozen heart of Antarctica itself. Its beauties may be unearthly, but they are not for us.

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
Frozen
Unearthly
Animal
Penguin
Literature
Forbidding
May
Antarctica
Heart
Penguins
Beauties
Inaccessible
Emperor

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Nothing remains the same from one moment to the next, you can't step into the same river twice. Life--evolution--the whole universe of space/time, matter/energy--existence itself--is essentially change.
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She'll die.' 'Aye. That's a consequence of being alive.
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Sometimes you must go against the wheel's turn.
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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.
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Prose writers are interested mostly in life and commas.
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Artists are people who are not at all interested in the facts - only in the truth.
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There's a great fear of the imagination. It's a dangerous thing. It's out of control, it's subversive.
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When people say, Did you always want to be a writer?, I have to say no! I always WAS a writer.
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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.
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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.
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To be whole is to be part true voyage is return.
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Now perhaps an excessive dread of overpopulation--overcrowding--reflects not an outward reality, but an inward state of mind. If you feel overcrowded when you're not, what does that mean? Maybe that you're afraid of human contact--of being close to people, of being touched.
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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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There is a limited number of plots. There is no limit to the number of stories.
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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.
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Primitiveness and civilization are degrees of the same thing. If civilization has an opposite, it is war.
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A man wants his virility regarded. A woman wants her femininity appreciated, however indirect and subtle the indications of regard and appreciation. [Here] one is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience.
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I write with all my heart
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One man may as easily destroy, as govern: be King or Anti-King.
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