Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes

To light a candle is to cast a shadow.

Ursula K. Le Guin

She'll die.' 'Aye. That's a consequence of being alive.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it.

Ursula K. Le Guin

I expect it will turn out that sexual intercourse is possible between Gethenian double-sexed and Hainish-norm one-sexed human beings, though such intercourse will inevitably be sterile. It remains to be proved; Estraven and I proved nothing except perhaps a rather subtler point.

Ursula K. Le Guin

The High-Intelligence Life Forms of the planet, of which there were at least three species, all of low technological achievement, they would ignore or enslave or extirpate, whichever was most convenient. For to an aggressive people only technology mattered.

Ursula K. Le Guin

It seemed, at least, that they had not taught the boy to lie. But they had not taught him to know truth from lies.

Ursula K. Le Guin

If a book were written all in numbers, it would be true. It would be just. Nothing said in words ever came out quite even. Things in words got twisted and ran together, instead of staying straight and fitting together. But underneath the words, at the center, like the center of the Square, it all came out even. Everything could change, yet nothing would be lost. If you saw the numbers you could see that, the balance, the pattern. You saw the foundations of the world. And they were solid.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Without war there are no heroes.What harm would that be?Oh, Lavinia, what a woman's question that is.

Ursula K. Le Guin

If you see a whole thing - it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives... But up close a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern.

Ursula K. Le Guin

I talk about the gods, I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth.

Ursula K. Le Guin

I had forgotten how much light there is in the world, till you gave it back to me.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Truth, as ever, avoids the stranger.

Ursula K. Le Guin

All knowledge is local, all truth is partial. No truth can make another truth untrue. All knowledge is part of the whole knowledge. A true line, a true color. Once you have seen the larger pattern, you cannot get back to seeing the part as the whole.

Ursula K. Le Guin

I have told the story I was asked to tell. I have closed it, as so many stories close, with a joining of two people. What is one man's and one woman's love and desire, against the history of two worlds, the great revolutions of our lifetimes, the hope, the unending cruelty of our species? A little thing. But a key is a little thing, next to the door it opens. If you lose the key, the door may never be unlocked. It is in our bodies that we lose or begin our freedom, in our bodies that we accept or end our slavery. So I wrote this book for my friend, with whom I have lived and will die free.

Ursula K. Le Guin

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

To oppose something is to maintain it... You must go somewhere else; you must have another goal; then you walk a different road.

Ursula K. Le Guin

It's a rare gift, to know where you need to be, before you've been to all the places you don't need to be.

Ursula K. Le Guin

I doubt that the imagination can be suppressed. If you truly eradicated it in a child, he would grow up to be an eggplant.

Ursula K. Le Guin

What you love, you will love. What you undertake you will complete. You are a fulfiller of hope; you are to be relied on. But seventeen years give little armor against despair...Consider, Arren. To refuse death is to refuse life.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Oh, never and forever aren't for mortals, love. But we won't be parted till I know it's right that we part.

Ursula K. Le Guin