In her own words: Ursula K Le Guin

solivar:

“It is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception and compassion and hope.”

“The creative adult is the child who has survived.”

“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.”

 

“A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.”

“As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing a Bach suite participates, note by note, in the creation, the coming-to-be, the existence, of the music. And, as you read and re-read, the book of course participates in the creation of you, your thoughts and feelings, the size and temper of your soul.”

“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.”

“Truth is a matter of the imagination.”

“Go to bed; tired is stupid.”

“Nobody who says, ‘I told you so’ has ever been, or will ever be, a hero.”

“To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.”

“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.”

“It is very hard for evil to take hold of the unconsenting soul.”

“But need alone is not enough to set power free: there must be knowledge.”

“The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means.”

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ‘em, join ‘em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else.”

“Smiles, bells, parades, horses, bleh. If so, please add an orgy. If an orgy would help, don’t hesitate.” 

“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.”

“To see a candle’s light one must take it into a dark place.”

“No darkness lasts forever. And even there, there are stars.”

“This is. And thou art. There is no safety. There is no end. The word must be heard in silence. There must be darkness to see the stars. The dance is always danced above the hollow place, above the terrible abyss.” 

“We’re each of us alone, to be sure. What can you do but hold your hand out in the dark?”

“I had forgotten how much light there is in the world, till you gave it back to me.”