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The reader can't take much for granted in a fiction where the scenery can eat the characters.
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
Much
Scenery
Granted
Characters
Reader
Fiction
Character
Take
More quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin
The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty not knowing what comes next.
Ursula K. Le Guin
I think what's happening is, it's all - fantasy, science fiction, ghosts, trolls, whatever - finally being called, being admitted to be literature. The way it used to be, before the Realists and the bloody Modernists took over.
Ursula K. Le Guin
In the tale, in the telling, we are all one blood.
Ursula K. Le Guin
What is the use trying to describe the flowing of a river at any one moment, and then at the next moment, and then at the next, and the next, and the next? You wear out. You say: There is a great river, and it flows through this land, and we have named it History.
Ursula K. Le Guin
A man who doesn't detest a bad government is a fool. And if there were such a thing as a good government on earth, it would be a great joy to serve it.
Ursula K. Le Guin
What is love of one's country is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing. Is it simply self-love? That's a good thing, but one musn't make a virtue of it, or a profession...Insofar as I love life, I love [my country], but that sort of love does not have a boundary-line of hate. And beyond that, I am ignorant, I hope.
Ursula K. Le Guin
What is more arrogant than honesty?
Ursula K. Le Guin
I'm not a quester or a searcher for the truth. I don't really think there is one answer, so I never went looking for it. My impulse is less questing and more playful. I like trying on ideas and ways of life and religious approaches. I'm just not a good candidate for conversion.
Ursula K. Le Guin
What you select from, in order to tell your story, is nothing less than everything. What you build up your world from, your local, intelligible rational, coherent world, is nothing less than everything. . . . . All human knowledge is local. Every life, each human life is local, is arbitrary, the infinitesimal momentary glitter of a reflection.
Ursula K. Le Guin
When action grows unprofitable, gather information when information grows unprofitable, sleep.
Ursula K. Le Guin
It was easy to share when there was enough, even barely enough, to go round. But when there was not enough? Then force entered in might making right power, and its tool, violence, and its most devoted ally, the averted eye.
Ursula K. Le Guin
There are two kinds of knowledge, local and universal.
Ursula K. Le Guin
To oppose something is to maintain it.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Nothing said in words ever came out quite even. Things in words got twisted and ran together, instead of staying straight and fitting together.
Ursula K. Le Guin
She had always known that all lives are in common, rejoicing in her kinship to the fish in the tanks of her laboratories, seeking the experience of existences outside the human boundary.
Ursula K. Le Guin
The counsel of the dead is not profitable to the living.
Ursula K. Le Guin
The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel. The rabbit shrieks dying in the green meadows. The mountains clench their great hands full of hidden fire. There are sharks in the sea, and there is cruelty in men's eyes.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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
The only questions that really matter are the ones you ask yourself.
Ursula K. Le Guin