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One of the things [fiction] does is lead you to recognize what you did not know before.

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
Things
Recognize
Lead
Fiction
Doe

More quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin

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What is a body that casts no shadow? Nothing, a formlessness, two-dimensional, a comic-strip character. If I deny my own profound relationship with evil I deny my own reality. I cannot do, or make I can only undo, unmake.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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A story rises from the springs of creation, from the pure will to be it tells itself I takes its own course, finds its own way, its own words and the writer's job is to be its medium.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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We sleep researchers like cats, you know they sleep a lot!
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We decided that it was no good asking what is the meaning of life, because life isn't an answer, life is the question, and you, yourself, are the answer.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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I'd rather get bad news from an honest man than lies from a flatterer.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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There are no right answers to wrong questions.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Legends of prediction are common throughout the whole Household of Man. Gods speak, spirits speak, computers speak. Oracular ambiguity or statistical probability provides loopholes, and discrepancies are expunged by Faith.
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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To learn a belief without the belief is to sing a song without the tune.
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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The same old hypocrisy. Life is a fight, and the strongest wins. All civilization does is hide the blood and cover up the hate with pretty words!
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Even in merely reading a fairytale, we must let go our daylight convictions and trust ourselves to be guided by dark figures, in silence and when we come back, it may be very hard to describe where we have been.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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You know, I don't think a lot about why one book connects with its readers and another doesn't. Probably because I don't want to start thinking, Am I popular? I spent way too much time thinking about that in high school.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Do you know how to read? No. It is one of the black arts. He nodded. But a useful one, he said.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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I've got some gift for languages. You follow your gift. But Latin's not easy.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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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.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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My great-aunt. . . . said nobody under 18 had any business reading Dickens. . . . She was right.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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The individual cannot bargain with the State. The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coins itself.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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It had never occurred to me before that music and thinking are so much alike. In fact you could say music is another way of thinking, or maybe thinking is another kind of music.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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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