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Ursula K. Le Guin: 584 quotes22 likes

“He detested them for forcing helplessness upon him.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, Planet of Exile (1966), Chapter 9 (The Guerillas)

“What is one man's and one woman's love and desire, against the history of two worlds, the greatest revolution of our lifetimes, the hope, the unending cruelty of our species? A little thing. But a key is a little thing, next to the door it opens.”

Ursula K. Le Guin book Four Ways to Forgiveness

"A Woman's Liberation", p. 208
Four Ways to Forgiveness (1995)

“What is the use trying to describe the flowing of a river at any one moment, and then at the next moment, and then at the next, and the next, and the next? You wear out. You say: There is a great river, and it flows through this land, and we have named it History.”

Ursula K. Le Guin book Four Ways to Forgiveness

"A Man of the People", p. 108
Four Ways to Forgiveness (1995)

“Light is the left hand of darkness
and darkness the right hand of light.
Two are one, life and death, lying
together like lovers in kemmer,
like hands joined together,
like the end and the way.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Chapter 16 “Between Drumner and Dremegole” (p. 233)

“I’ll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination. The soundest fact may fail or prevail in the style of its telling: like that singular organic jewel of our seas, which grows brighter as one woman wears it and, worn by another, dulls and goes to dust. Facts are no more solid, coherent, round, and real than pearls are. But both are sensitive.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Chapter 1 “A Parade in Ehrenrang” (p. 1; opening paragraph)

“Mr. Ai, we’ve seen the same events with different eyes; I wrongly thought they’d seem the same to us.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Chapter 14 “The Escape” (p. 197)

“Our model of the cosmos must be as inexhaustible as the cosmos. A complexity that includes not only duration but creation, not only being but becoming, not only geometry but ethics. It is not the answer we are after, but only how to ask the question.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, (1974), Chapter 7 (p. 226)

““It is not right to want to die,” the Summoner said….“For the very old, the very ill, it may be. But life is given us. Surely it’s wrong not to hold and treasure that great gift!”
“Death also is given us,” said the king.”

Ursula K. Le Guin

Source: Earthsea Books, The Other Wind (2001), Chapter 5 “Rejoining” (p. 284)

“"Why must there be war?" "Oh Lavinia, what a woman's question that is! Because men are men."”

Ursula K. Le Guin book Lavinia

Source: Lavinia (2008), p. 87

“He was a hard shrewd jovial politician, whose acts of kindness served his interest and whose interest was himself. His type is panhuman. I had met him on Earth, and on Hain, and on Ollul. I expect to meet him in Hell.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Chapter 8 “Another Way into Orgoreyn” (p. 116)

“Those were men in whom great strength and knowledge served the will to evil and fed upon it. Whether the wizardry that serves a better end may always prove the stronger, we do not know. We hope.”

Ursula K. Le Guin

Source: Earthsea Books, The Farthest Shore (1972), Chapter 3, "Hort Town" (Ged)

“Ignorant power is a bane!”

Ursula K. Le Guin

“The Finder” (p. 66)
Earthsea Books, Tales from Earthsea (2001)

“Excess is excrement.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, The Dispossessed (1974), Chapter 4 (p. 98)

“Greed puts out the sun.”

Ursula K. Le Guin

Source: Earthsea Books, The Other Wind (2001), Chapter 5 “Rejoining” (p. 281)

“I raised as irreligious as a jackrabbit.”

Ursula K. Le Guin

О себе

“I take a perverse pleasure in calling myself a feminist.”

Ursula K. Le Guin

О себе

“J. Rowling <…> has many virtues, but originality isn't one of them. That hurt.”

Ursula K. Le Guin

О других людях

“Le Guin is a quintessentially American writer, <…> for whom the quest for the Peaceable Kingdom is ongoing.”

Ursula K. Le Guin

“England is a good country for introverts; they have a place in society for the introvert, which the United States has not.”

Ursula K. Le Guin

“A king has soldiers, servants, messengers, lieutenants. He governs through his servants. Where are the servants of this—Anti-king?”

Ursula K. Le Guin

“In our minds, lad. In our minds. The traitor, the self; the self that cries I want to live; let the world burn so long as I can live! The little traitor soul in us, in the dark, like the worm in the apple.”
Source: Earthsea Books, The Farthest Shore (1972), Chapter 9, "Orm Embar" (Arren and Ged)