American author (1929- )
Realism is a very sophisticated form of literature, a very grown-up one. And that may be its weakness. But fantasy seems to be eternal and omnipresent and always attractive to kids.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
interview, The Paris Review, fall 2013
The individual cannot bargain with the State. The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coin itself.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Dispossessed
While we read a novel, we are insane--bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren't there, we hear their voices, we watch the battle of Borodino with them, we may even become Napoleon. Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction
Children know perfectly well that unicorns aren't real, but they also know that books about unicorns, if they are good books, are true books.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction
People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Wave in the Mind: Talks & Essays on the Writer, the Reader, & the Imagination
You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Dispossessed
He arrived at ideas the slow way, never skating over the clear, hard ice of logic, nor soaring on the slipstreams of imagination, but slogging, plodding along on the heavy ground of existence. He did not see the connections, which is said to be the hallmark of intellect. He felt connections--like a plumber.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Lathe of Heaven
Living, being in the world, was a much greater and stranger thing than she had ever dreamed.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Tombs of Atuan
Morality is an utterly meaningless term unless defined as the good one does to others, the fulfilling of one's function in the sociopolitical whole.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Lathe of Heaven
Nothing remains the same from one moment to the next, you can't step into the same river twice. Life--evolution--the whole universe of space/time, matter/energy--existence itself--is essentially change.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Lathe of Heaven
One swallow does not make a summer.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Lathe of Heaven
There are things that outweigh comfort, unless one is an old woman or a cat.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Left Hand of Darkness
There are very real differences between science fiction and realistic fiction, between horror and fantasy, between romance and mystery. Differences in writing them, in reading them, in criticizing them. Vive les différences! They're what gives each genre its singular flavor and savor, its particular interest for the reader--and the writer.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
interview, Electric Lit, August 7, 2014
Have you never thought how danger must surround power as shadow does light?
URSULA K. LE GUIN
A Wizard of Earthsea
It is of the nature of idea to be communicated: written, spoken, done. The idea is like grass. It craves light, likes crowds, thrives on crossbreeding, grows better for being stepped on.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Dispossessed
O foolish writer. Now moves. Even in storytime, dreamtime, once-upon-a-time, now isn't then.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
foreward, Tales from Earthsea
Virginity is now a mere preamble or waiting room to be got out of as soon as possible; it is without significance. Old age is similarly a waiting room, where you go after life’s over and wait for cancer or a stroke. The years before and after the menstrual years are vestigial: the only meaningful condition left to women is that of fruitfulness.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
"The Space Crone", Co-Evolution Quarterly, summer 1976
Fire and fear, good servants, bad lords.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Left Hand of Darkness
It's not a weapon or a woman can make a man, or magery either, or any power, anything but himself.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Tehanu
Revolution is our obligation: our hope of evolution.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Dispossessed