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I don't believe that a writer 'gets' (takes into the head) an 'idea' (some sort of mental object) 'from' somewhere, and then turns it into words, and writes them on paper. At least in my experience, it doesn't work that way. The stuff has to be transformed into oneself, it has to be composted, before it can grow into a story.

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
Ideas
Turns
Gets
Writes
Writing
Story
Writer
Transformed
Work
Words
Grow
Object
Believe
Idea
Takes
Mental
Way
Experience
Least
Somewhere
Stuff
Head
Oneself
Doesn
Sort
Paper
Stories
Grows
Objects

More quotes by 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.
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There's no way to use power for good.
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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.
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What is love of one's country is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing.
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You must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act.
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To see a candle's light, one must take it into a dark place. This is the same as to see the good and be grateful, one must compare and contrast it with something worse - not better!
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Great artists make the roads good teachers and good companions can point them out. But there ain't no free rides, baby.
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If I had to pick a hero, it would be Charles Darwin--the size of his mind, which included all that scientific curiosity and knowledge seeking, and the ability to put it all together. There is a genuine spirituality about Darwin's thinking.
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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.
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Injustice makes the rules, and courage breaks them.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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No man, no power, can bind the action of wizardry or still the words of power. For they are the very words of Making, and one who could silence them could unmake the world.
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George, it's impossible to correct a defective reality-orientation overnight.
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Skill in writing frees you to write what you want to write. It may also show you what you want to write. Craft enables art.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive. In the middle category, however - that of the unnecessary but undestructive, that of comfort, luxury, exuberance, etc
Ursula K. Le Guin
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We have been civilized for a thousand millennia. We have histories of hundreds of those millennia. We have tried everything. Anarchism, in all its forms, with the rest. But I have not tried it. They say there is nothing new under any sun. But if each life is not new, each single life, then why are we born?
Ursula K. Le Guin
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I believe that maturity is not an outgrowing, but a growing up: that an adult is not a dead child, but a child who survived. I believe that all the best faculties of a mature human being exist in the child. . . that one of the most deeply human, and humane, of these faculties is the power of imagination.
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There are dance artists, painting artists and writing artists. Authors are writing artists. You can practice art in whatever medium you choose, and words are mine.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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No society can change the nature of existence. We can't prevent suffering. This pain and that pain, yes, but not Pain. A society can only relieve social suffering, unnecessary suffering. The rest remains. The root, the reality.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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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.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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The artist deals with what cannot be said in words.
Ursula K. Le Guin