The nod of a head is such a small thing, it can mean so little, yet it is the gesture of assent that allows, that makes to be. The nod is the gesture of power, the yes. The numen. the presence of the sacred, is called by its name. - Ursula K. Le Guin
In modern fantasy (literary or governmental), killing people is the usual solution to the so-called war between good and evil. - Ursula K. Le Guin
I fear liars, and I fear tricksters, and worst I fear the bitter truth. And so I rule my country well. Because only fear rules men. Nothing else works. Nothing else lasts long enough. - Ursula K. Le Guin
Every book purchase made from Amazon is a vote for a culture without content and without contentment. - Ursula K. Le Guin
Sure, it's simple writing for kids…just as simple as bringing them up. - Ursula K. Le Guin
What you love, you will love. What you undertake you will complete. You are a fulfiller of hope; you are to be relied on. But seventeen years give little armor against despair…Consider, Arren. To refuse death is to refuse life. - Ursula K. Le Guin
Almost everything carried to its logical extreme becomes either depressing or carcinogenic. - Ursula K. Le Guin
There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories. - Ursula K. Le Guin
I know perfectly well he's a god, too. But what I think is he'll be much godlier after he's dead. - Ursula K. Le Guin
We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words. - Ursula K. Le Guin
I write with all my heart - Ursula K. Le Guin
What is life without incompatible realities? - Ursula K. Le Guin
Words are events, they do things, change things. They transform both speaker and hearer; they feed energy back and forth and amplify it - Ursula K. Le Guin
Everything is old, here. We are old - the Masters.""You're not," Irian said. She thought him between thirty and forty[...]"But I came far. Miles can be years. - Ursula K. Le Guin
The only questions that really matter are the ones you ask yourself. - Ursula K. Le Guin
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
You know there’s always prejudice in a revolutionary movement. - Ursula K. Le Guin
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
The sleeper turns his back on everyone. - Ursula K. Le Guin
The imagination is truly the enemy of bigotry and dogma. - Ursula K. Le Guin
Civilized Man says: I am Self, I am Master, all the rest is other--outside, below, underneath, subservient. I own, I use, I explore, I exploit, I control. What I do is what matters. What I want is what matter is for. I am that I am, and the rest is women & wilderness, to be used as I see fit. - Ursula K. Le Guin
If a book were written all in numbers, it would be true. It would be just. Nothing said in words ever came out quite even. - Ursula K. Le Guin
a book is a box of words until you open it. - Ursula K. Le Guin
Up here on the Ice each of us is singular, isolate, I as cut off from those like me, from my society, and its rules, as he from his. - Ursula K. Le Guin
When you light a candle, you also cast a shadow. - Ursula K. Le Guin
If women had power, what would men be but women who can't bear children? And what would women be but men who can?...I mean, men give her [a queen] power. They let her use their power. But it isn't hers, is it? It isn't because she's a woman that she's powerful, but despite it. - 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
What is an anarchist? One who, choosing, accepts the responsibility of choice. - Ursula K. Le Guin
To see a candle's light one must take it into a dark place. - Ursula K. Le Guin
I use a whole lot of half-assed semicolons; there was one of them just now; that was a semicolon after 'semicolons,' and another one after 'now. - Ursula K. Le Guin
So rest a while, we can talk in the cool of the evening. Or the cool of the morning. There 's seldom as much hurry as I used to think there was." -HawkWho had been ArchmageThe Other Wind - Ursula K. Le Guin
To oppose something is to maintain it... You must go somewhere else; you must have another goal; then you walk a different road. - Ursula K. Le Guin
You always have to defend the imagination against idiots. - Ursula K. Le Guin
Imagination grows by exercise and contrary to common belief is more powerful in the mature than in the young. - Ursula K. Le Guin
Nobody who says, ‘I told you so’ has ever been, or will ever be, a hero. - Ursula K. Le Guin
The power of the harasser, the abuser, the rapist depends above all on the silence of women. - Ursula K. Le Guin
I am living in a nightmare, from which from time to time I wake in sleep. - Ursula K. Le Guin
But you're so strong. I wish I were strong. I just like eating. - Ursula K. Le Guin
I think the mystery of art lies in this, that artists’ relationship is essentially with their work — not with power, not with profit, not with themselves, not even with their audience. - Ursula K. Le Guin
Other people's stories may become part of your own, the foundation of it, the ground it goes on. - Ursula K. Le Guin
The law of evolution is that the strongest survives!' 'Yes, and the strongest, in the existence of any social species, are those who are most social. In human terms, most ethical...There is no strength to be gained from hurting one another. Only weakness. - Ursula K. Le Guin
While we read a novel, we are insane—bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren't there, we hear their voices... Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed. - Ursula K. Le Guin
He, after all, had no standards of manliness, of virility, to complicate his pride. - Ursula K. Le Guin
We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become. - Ursula K. Le Guin