Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes

I spoke your true name. It's not what I thought it would be. And I don't feel easy about it. As if I'd left something unfinished. But it is your name. If it betrays you, then that's the truth of it. R...

I only ask your help, for which I have nothing to give in return.Nothing? You call your theory nothingWeigh it in the balance with the freedom of one single human spirit, he said, turning to her, and...

I never know the heron as it flies at first. What is the slow, wide-winged figure in the sky? Then I see it, like a word in a foreign language, like seeing one’s own name written in a strange alphabet...

I lied. I lied. I lied. I lied deliberately, knowingly, well. She lied. She is a liar. She is an intellectual too! She is a lie. And a coward, afraid.

I know who I was, I can tell you who I may have been, but I am, now, only in this line of words I write. I'm not sure of the nature of my existence, and wonder to find myself writing.

I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary...

I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain ploughland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundar...

I hope you’ll understand that I am not quoting those great words lightly. I do mean it. Knowledge sets us free, art sets us free. A great library is freedom.

I have given my love to what is worthy of love. Is that not the kingdom and the unperishing spring?

I hate the bigotry you believe in. But I'll try not to hate you.

I had ignored that black cellar and gone looking for the substance of Orgoreyn aboveground, in daylight. No wonder nothing had seemed real. I

I had believed that justice could exist in a society founded on injustice.

I found out I was in love with you, winter before last, she said. I wasn't going to say anything about it because - well, you know. If you'd felt anything like that for me, you'd have known I did. But...

I forgot, being too interested myself, that he’s a king, and does not see things rationally, but as a king. All I’ve told him means to him simply that his power is threatened, his kingdom is a dust mo...

I don’t know. Do men kill men, except in madness? Does any beast kill its own kind? Only the insects. These yumens kill us as lightly as we kill snakes. The one who taught me said that they kill one a...

I don't know. Things don't have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What's the function of a galaxy? I don't know if our life has a purpose and I don't...

I do not say that artists cannot be seers, inspired: that the

I did a lot today. That is, I did something. The only thing I have ever done. I pressed a button. It took the entire willpower, the accumulated strength of my entire existence, to press one damned OFF...

I certainly wasn't happy. Happiness has to do with reason, and only reason earns it. What I was given was the thing you can't earn, and can't keep, and often don't even recognize at the time; I mean j...

I came to the center of the maze following him. Now I must find my way back out alone.