Famous Quotes,
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Ursula K. Le Guin

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Ursula K. Le Guin

Born: October 21, 1929

Nationality: American

Occupation: Author, novelist

Biography: Ursula Kroeber Le Guin is an American author of novels, children's books, and short stories, mainly in the genres of fantasy and science fiction. She has also written poetry and essays.

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Ursula K. Le Guin

“Belief in heaven and hell is a big deal in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and some forms of doctrinaire Buddhism. For the rest of us it's simply meaningless. We don't live in order to die, we live in order to live.”

- Ursula K. Le Guin

Source/Notes: in an interview in Vice Magazine.

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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

Source/Notes: The Creatures on My Mind in Unlocking the Air and Other Stories (1996), p. 65

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Ursula K. Le Guin

“All of us have to learn how to invent our lives, make them up, imagine them. We need to be taught these skills; we need guides to show us how. If we don't, our lives get made up for us by other people.”

- Ursula K. Le Guin

Source/Notes: The Operating Instructions in The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination (2004)

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Ursula K. Le Guin

“To think that realistic fiction is by definition superior to imaginative fiction is to think imitation is superior to invention.”

- Ursula K. Le Guin

Source/Notes: The Question I Get Asked Most Often in The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination (2004)

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Ursula K. Le Guin

“What's to gain by silence?”

- Ursula K. Le Guin

Source/Notes: Cannoc, in Gifts (2004)

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Ursula K. Le Guin

“Sometimes one's very angry and preaches, but I know that to clinch a point is to close it. To leave the reader free to decide what your work means, that's the real art; it makes the work inexhaustible.”

- Ursula K. Le Guin

Source/Notes: The magician by Maya Jaggi in The Guardian (17 December 2005)

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Ursula K. Le Guin

“The notion that a story has a message assumes that it can be reduced to a few abstract words, neatly summarized in a school or college examination paper or a brisk critical review.”

- Ursula K. Le Guin

Source/Notes: A Message About Messages in CBC Magazine

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Ursula K. Le Guin

“Long ago we parted, said the slight, still man of the Fiia. Longer ago we were one. What we are not, they are. What we are, they are not. Think of the sunlight and the grass and the trees that bear fruit, Semley; think that not all roads that lead down lead up as well.”

- Ursula K. Le Guin

Source/Notes: Rocannon's World (1966)

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Ursula K. Le Guin

“The High-Intelligence Life Forms of the planet, of which there were at least three species, all of low technological achievement, they would ignore or enslave or extirpate, whichever was most convenient. For to an aggressive people only technology mattered.”

- Ursula K. Le Guin

Source/Notes: Rocannon's World (1966)

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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.”

- Ursula K. Le Guin

Source/Notes: Rocannon's World (1966)

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Ursula K. Le Guin

“All men were alien one to another, at times, not only aliens.”

- Ursula K. Le Guin

Source/Notes: Chapter 4 (The Tall Young Men) - Planet of Exile (1966)

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Ursula K. Le Guin

“Men who fight wars in Winter don't live till Spring.”

- Ursula K. Le Guin

Source/Notes: Chapter 4 (The Tall Young Men) - Planet of Exile (1966)

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Ursula K. Le Guin

“He detested them for forcing helplessness upon him.”

- Ursula K. Le Guin

Source/Notes: Chapter 9 (The Guerillas) - Planet of Exile (1966)

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Ursula K. Le Guin

“Truth, as ever, avoids the stranger.”

- Ursula K. Le Guin

Source/Notes: City of Illusions (1967)

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