Quotes from Ursula K. Le Guin

Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.

The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.

The artist deals in what cannot be said in words. The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.

Fake realism is the escapist literature of our time. And probably the ultimate escapist reading is that masterpiece of total unreality, the daily stock market report.

O foolish writer. Now moves. Even in storytime, dreamtime, once-upon-a-time, now isn't then.

I certainly wasn't happy. Happiness has to do with reason, and only reason earns it. What I was given was the thing you can't earn, and can't keep, and often don't even recognize at the time; I mean joy.

Very seldom do you come upon a space, a time like this, between act and act, when you may stop and simply be.

I was in too much haste, and now have no time left. I traded all the sunlight and the cities and the distant lands for a handful of power, for a shadow, for the dark.

The thing about working with time, instead of against it, he thought, is that it is not wasted. Even pain counts.

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.

The explorer who will not come back or send back his ships to tell his tale is not an explorer, only an adventurer; and his sons are born in exile.

What is love of one's country; is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing.

Ah, genre. A word only a Frenchman could love.

Love does not obey the mind, and turns to hate when forced.

Love is the true condition of human life.

He is far too intelligent to become really cerebral.

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.

One voice speaking truth is a greater force than fleets and armies.

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.

Truth, as ever, avoids the stranger.

Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth.

Scientific truth will out, you can't hide the sun under a stone.

You go to the Place of the Lie to find out the truth?

She obeys me, but only because she wants to. It's the only justification for obedience, Ged observed.