Ursula K. Le Guin quotes

The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next. (Ursula K. Le Guin)
It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters in the end. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
In so far as one denies what is, one is possessed by what is not, the compulsions, the fantasies, the terrors that flock to fill the void. View quote
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. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
To hear, one must be silent. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
If science fiction is the mythology of modern technology, then its myth is tragic. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
There are no right answers to wrong questions. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
If you want your writing to be taken seriously, don't marry and have kids, and above all, don't die. But if you have to die, commit suicide. They approve of that. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world and exiles me from it. (Ursula K. Le Guin)
Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
A child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of economic competition will grow up with the will to do what needs doing and the capacity for joy in doing it. It is useless work that darkens the heart. The delight of the nursing mother, of the scholar, of the successful hunter, of the good cook, of the skilful maker, of anyone doing needed work and doing it well, - this durable joy is perhaps the deepest source of human affection and of sociality as a whole. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
If civilization has an opposite, it is war. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
The counsel of the dead is not profitable to the living. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
The individual cannot bargain with the State. The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coins itself. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
Legends of prediction are common throughout the whole Household of Man. Gods speak, spirits speak, computers speak. Oracular ambiguity or statistical probability provides loopholes, and discrepancies are expunged by Faith. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
He was appalled by the examination system, when it was explained to him, he could not imagine a greater detterent to the natural wish to learn than this pattern of cramming in information and disgorging it on demand. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
In art, 'good enough' is not good enough. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
It did not matter, after all. He was only one man. One man's fate is not important. 'If it is not, what is' He could not endure those remembered words. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
A scientist can pretend that his work isn't himself, it's merely the impersonal truth. An artist can't hide behind the truth. He can't hide anywhere. (Ursula K. Le Guin)
Sure, it's simple, writing for kids. Just as simple as bringing them up. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
Great artists make the roads; good teachers and good companions can point them out. But there ain't no free rides, baby. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
It's not a weapon or a woman can make a man, or magery either, or any power, anything but himself. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
Men call women faithless, changeable, and though they say it in jealousy of their own ever-threatened sexual honor, there is some truth in it. We can change our life, our being; no matter what our will is, we are changed. As the moon changes yet is one, so we are virgin, wife, mother, grandmother. For all their restlessness, men are who they are; once they put on the man's toga they will not change again; so they make a virtue of that rigidity and resist whatever might soften it and set them free. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin