Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes

538 quotes · Author, Poet, Essayist

Page 21 of 45

Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes

All Philosophical Creative Angry Wise Spiritual 538 quotes · page 21 of 45

Ursula K. Le Guin

Author, Poet, Essayist

Spiritual

“What is a woman's power then?" she asked. "I don't think we know." "When has a woman power because she's a woman? With her children, I suppose. For a while..." "In her house, maybe." She looked around the kitchen. "But the doors are shut," she said, "the doors are locked." "Because you're valuable." "Oh yes. We're precious. So long as we're powerless.”

Thinking Children Doors

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Ursula K. Le Guin

Author, Poet, Essayist

Philosophical

“My soul is ten thousand miles wide and extremely invisibly deep. It is the same size as the sea, and you cannot, you cannot cram it into beer cans and fingernails and stake it out in lots and own it. It will drown you all and never even notice.”

Soul Sea Beer

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Philosophical

“Science fiction is not prescriptive; it is descriptive.”

Fiction Science Fiction

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Inspired

“It is useless work that darkens the heart.”

Heart Work

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Wise

“Belief is the wound that knowledge heals.”

Belief Heal Thrive

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Funny

“Ah, genre. A word only a Frenchman could love.”

Genre Frenchmen

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Hopeful

“If you evade suffering, you also evade the chance of joy.”

Joy Suffering

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Philosophical

“In that moment Ged understood the singing of the bird, and the language of the water falling in the basin of the fountain, and the shape of the clouds, and the beginning and end of the wind that stirred the leaves; it seemed to him that he himself was a word spoken by the sunlight.”

Fall Wind Clouds

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Wise

“He was appalled by the examination system, when it was explained to him, he could not imagine a greater detterent to the natural wish to learn than this pattern of cramming in information and disgorging it on demand.”

Wish Demand Examination

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Spiritual

“It is no secret. All power is one in source and end, I think. Years and distances, stars and candles, water and wind and wizardry, the craft in a man's hand and the wisdom in a tree's root: they all arise together. My name, and yours, and the true name of the sun, or a spring of water, or an unborn child, all are syllables of the great word that is very slowly spoken by the shining of the stars. There is no other power. No other name.”

Children Stars Distance

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Creative

“I think the mystery of art lies in this, that artists’ relationship is essentially with their work — not with power, not with profit, not with themselves, not even with their audience.”

Thinking Art Lying

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Funny

“When I was young, I had to choose between the life of being and the life of doing. And I leapt at the latter like a trout to a fly. But each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act again and yet again. Then very seldom do you come upon a space, a time like this, between act and act, when you may stop and simply be. Or wonder who, after all, you are.”

Space Deeds Trout

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