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Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it is like anything else

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
Like
Translate
Entirely
Mysterious
Felt
Art
Translating
Else
Translation
Anything
Translations
Writing
Increasingly

More quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin

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We of Es Toch tell a little myth, which says that in the beginning the Creator told a great lie. For there was nothing at all, but the Creator spoke, saying, It exists. And behold, in order that the lie of God might be God's truth, the universe at once began to exist.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Honestly, orthodoxy concerns me about as much as it concerns your average jackrabbit. I only follow rules that take me where I want to go. If there aren't any rules, I make up my own and follow them strictly.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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The law of evolution is that the strongest survives!' 'Yes, and the strongest, in the existence of any social species, are those who are most social. In human terms, most ethical...There is no strength to be gained from hurting one another. Only weakness.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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He had grown up in a country run by politicians who sent the pilots to man the bombers to kill the babies to make the world safer for children to grow up in.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Manhood is patience. Mastery is nine time patience
Ursula K. Le Guin
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What she needs, at least one thing she needs, is companionship. After all why should she eat? Who needs her to be alive? What we call psychosis is sometimes simply realism. But human beings can't live on realism alone.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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The word must be heard in silence there must be darkness to see the stars.
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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In so far as one denies what is, one is possessed by what is not, the compulsions, the fantasies, the terrors that flock to fill the void.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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What the brain does by itself is infinitely more fascinating and complex than any response it can make to chemical stimulation.
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.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Well, the secret to writing is writing. It's only a secret to people who don't want to hear it. Writing is how you be a writer.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable - but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Progress means nothing to presence.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Grieving, like being blind, is a strange business you have to learn how to do it. We seek company in mourning, but after the early bursts of tears, after the praises have been spoken, and the good days remembered, and the lament cried, and the grave closed, there is no company in grief. It is a burden borne alone.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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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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Literacy is so you can read the operating instructions.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Gradually the healing took place, seeming as it always does that it wasn't taking place.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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When the enemy enthusiastically embraces you, and the fellow countrymen bitterly reject you, it is hard not to wonder if you are, in fact, a traitor.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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There is not much you can say about a baby unless you are talking with its father or another mother or nurse infants are not part of the realm of ordinary language, talk is inadequate to them as they are inadequate to talk.
Ursula K. Le Guin