Ursula K Le Guin Quotes

“For fantasy is true, of course. It isn’t factual, but it’s true. Children know that. Adults know it too and that’s precisely why many of them are afraid of fantasy. They know that its truth challenges, even threatens, all that is false, all that is phony, unnecessary, and trivial in the life they have let themselves be forced into living. They are afraid of dragons because they are afraid of freedom.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction

“Our souls are old,
often used before.
The knife outlasts
the hand that holds it.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Always Coming Home

“A man who doesn’t detest a bad government is a fool. And if there were such a thing as a good government in earth, it would be a great joy to serve it.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“...There's no right answer
to the wrong question.
Now what do we do?”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Always Coming Home

“They have no gods. They work magic, and think they are gods themselves. But they are not. And when they die, they (...) become dust and bone, and their ghosts whine on the wind a little while till the wind blows them away. They do not have immortal souls.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan

“Bucket

I feel so dreamy
dreamy lazy, crazy sleepy
like I want to be there
in the doorway, the doorway
or the porch corner
be sitting, be empty
notdoing not going
an old bucket left there
in the porch corner is like I am
an old empty bucket somebody left there.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Always Coming Home

“The Sun Going South

In late sunshine I wander troubled.
Restless I wander in autumn sunlight.
Too many changes, partings, and deaths.
Doors have closed that were always open.
Trees that held the sky up are cut down.
So much that I alone remember!
This creek runs dry among its stones.
Souls of the dead, come drink this water!
Come into this side valley with me,
a restless old woman, unseemly,
troubled, walking on dry grass, dry stones.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“Loyalty, which asserts the continuity of past and future, binding time into a whole, is the root of human strength; there is no good to be done without it.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

“Through him speaks a shrewd and magnanimous people, a people who have woven together into one wisdom a profound, old, terrible, and unimaginably various experience of life. But he himself is young: impatient, inexperienced. He stands higher than we stand, seeing wider, but he is himself only the height of a man.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“With ceremony, with forms of politeness and reassurance, they borrowed the waters of the River and its little confluents to drink and be clean and irrigate with, using water mindfully, carefully. They lived in a land that answers greed with drought and death. A difficult land: aloof yet sensitive.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Always Coming Home

“- Si continúas así, si sigues huyendo, dondequiera que huyas siempre encontrarás el peligro y el mal, porque es ella la que te lleva, la que elige tu camino. Eres tú quien ha de elegir. Tienes que hostigar a quien te hostiga. Tienes que perseguir al cazador. - Ogión”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Un mago de Terramar I

“It had not rained, here on these north-facing slopes. Snow-fields stretched down from the pass into the valleys of moraine. We stowed the wheels, uncapped the sledge-runners, put on our skis, and took off—down, north, onward, into that silent vastness of fire and ice that said in enormous letters of black and white DEATH, DEATH, written right across a continent. The sledge pulled like a feather, and we laughed with joy.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“you speak the truth. Much will be lost. I know it. The lesser knowledge must be given to gain the greater. And not once only.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Four Ways to Forgiveness

“All that grieved me - that I was half one thing and half another and nothing wholly - was the sorrow of my childhood, but the strength and use of my life after I grew up.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“This Stone

He went looking for a road
that doesn't lead to death.
He went looking for that road
and found it.
It was a stone road.
He walked that road
that doesn't lead to death.
He walked on it awhile
before he stopped,
having turned to stone.
Now he stands there on that road
that doesn't lead to death
not going anywhere.
He can't dance.
from his eyes stones fall.
The rainbow people pass him
crossing that road, long-legged, light-stepping,
going from the Four Houses
to the dancing in the Five Houses.
They pick up his tears.
This stone is a tear
from his eye, this stone
given me on the mountain
by one who died before my birth,
this stone, this stone.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Always Coming Home

“Amazing Stories Mag: What does your writing process look like?

Ursula K. Le Guin: It looks like a woman sitting at a desk, or staring out a window, or cooking dinner, or waking up in the morning, or whatever. You know what a ground bass is in music? A theme that keeps going on underneath, no matter what else is happening on top of it? Writing is the ground bass of my existence.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“- La voz del mar
(...)
- ¿Cómo la oyes tú?
- Como diciendo el sonido ahm.
- En el Habla Arcana significa el principio, o hace mucho tiempo. Pero yo oigo ohb, que es una forma de decir el fin.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, La costa más lejana / Tehanu

“- Un falso rey reinando. Reinando para siempre. Y sobre los mismos súbditos para siempre. No más nacimientos, no más vidas nuevas. No más niños. Solo lo que es mortal engendra vida, Arren. Solo en la muerte hay renacimiento. El Equilibrio no es inmovilidad. Es un movimiento...un eterno devenir.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, La costa más lejana / Tehanu

“There was process: process was all. You could go in a promising direction or you could go wrong, but you did not set out with the expectation of ever stopping anywhere. All responsibilities, all commitments thus understood took on substance and duration.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

“Düzgün bir beden bir nesne değildir, bir araç, hayran olunacak bir mülk değildir, yalnızca sensindir o, kendin. Ancak, artık sen olmaktan çıkıp da senin olunca, sahip olunan bir şey olunca onun için endişelenmeye başlarsın. Biçimli mi? İdare eder mi? Hep böyle gider mi?

Rüzgarın On İki Köşesi - Devrimden Önceki Gün”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters / The Compass Rose

“She had aged more than four years. She had never had very good teeth, and now had lost two, just back of the upper eyeteeth, so that the gaps showed when she smiled. Her skin no longer had the fine taut surface of youth, and her hair, pulled back neatly was dull.

Shevek saw clearly that Takver had lost her young grace, and looked a plain, tired woman near the middle of her life. He saw this more clearly than anyone else could have seen it. He saw everything about Takver in a way that no one else could have seen it, from the standpoint of years of intimacy and years of longing. He saw her as she was.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia