Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes

If you evade suffering you also evade the chance of joy. Pleasure you may get, or pleasures, but you will not be fulfilled. You will not know what it is to come home. Takver

If there are frontiers between the civilised and the barbaric, between the meaningful and the unmeaning, they are not lines on a map nor are they regions of the earth. They are boundaries of the mind...

If one believes that words are acts, as I do, then one must hold writers responsible for what their words do.

I'm not sure. I'm exceedingly ignorant-The young man laughed and bowed. I'm honored! he said.I've lived here for three years, but haven't yet acquired enough ignorance to be worth mentioning.

I think the imagination is the single most useful tool mankind possesses. It beats the opposable thumb. I can imagine living without my thumbs, but not without my imagination. I

I think most old people know that, and many of us try to keep our thinking on the positive side as a matter of self-preservation, as well as dignity, the wish not to end with a prolonged whimper.

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. The only truth I can understand or express is, logically define...

I prefer to save talking till I know what I’m talking about.

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 knew a person who reacted so wholly and rapidly to a changed situation as Estraven. I was recovering, and willing to go; he was out of thangen; the instant that was all clear, he was off. He w...

I learned that the story has no beginning, and no story has an end. That the story is all muddle, all middle. That the story is never true, but that the lie is indeed a child of silence. By

I know who you are, she said. You're my enemy. The true believer. The righteous man with the righteous mission. The one that jails people for reading and burns the books. That persecutes people who do...

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

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 felt the pressure of people all around me, all the time. People around me, people with me, people pressing on me, pressing me to be one of them, one of the people.