Ursula K. Le Guin - Quodid

About

Picture of Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula Kroeber Le Guin ( KROH-bər lə GWIN; née Kroeber; October 21, 1929 – January 22, 2018) was an American author. She is best known for her works of speculative fiction, including science fiction works set in her Hainish universe and the fantasy series Earthsea. Her work was first published in 1959, and her literary career spanned nearly sixty years, producing more than twenty novels and more than a hundred short stories, in addition to poetry, literary criticism, translations, and children's books. Frequently described as an author of science fiction, Le Guin has also been called a "major voice in American Letters". Le Guin said that she would prefer to be known as an "American novelist".

Ursula K. Le Guin is sometimes cited as:

Ursula K. LeGuin
Ursula Le Guin

Quotes from Ursula K. Le Guin

The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.

—Ursula K. Le Guin

life future knowledge uncertainty

Certainly the effort to remain unchanged, young, when the body gives so impressive a signal of change as the menopause, is gallant; but it is a stupid, self-sacrificial gallantry, better befitting a boy of twenty than a woman of forty-five or fifty. Let the athletes die young and laurel-crowned. Let the soldiers earn the Purple Hearts. Let women die old, white-crowned, with human hearts.

—Ursula K. Le Guin

age effort menopause womanhood

The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.

—Ursula K. Le Guin

life future knowledge uncertainty

A person who believes … that there is a whole of which one is part, and that in being a part, one is whole: such a person has no desire whatever, at any time, to play God. Only those who have denied their being yearn to play at it.

—Ursula K. Le Guin

God belief desire denial

Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.

—Ursula K. Le Guin

love time change

All civilization ever does is hide the blood and cover up hate with pretty words.

—Ursula K. Le Guin

True myths may serve for thousands of years as an inexhaustible source of intellectual speculation, religious joy, ethical inquiry, and artistic renewal. The real mystery is not destroyed by reason. The fake one is. You look at it and it vanishes. You look at the Blond Hero — really look — and he turns into a gerbil. But you look at Apollo, and he looks back at you. The poet Rilke looked at a statue of Apollo about fifty years ago, and Apollo spoke to him. "You must change your life," he said. When the true myth rises into consciousness, that is always its message: "You must change your life.

—Ursula K. Le Guin

life religion change myth mystery art reason consciousness reflection inquiry

If you see a whole thing — it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives. . . . But up close a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern.

—Ursula K. Le Guin

There is a field where all wonderful perfections of microscope and telescope fail. All exquisite niceties of weights and measures as well as that which is behind them, the keen and driving power of the mind. No facts, however indubitably detected, no effort of reason, however magnificently maintained, can prove that Bach's music is beautiful.

—Ursula K. Le Guin in The Dispossessed

mind beauty perfection reason

Books

Ursula K. Le Guin has the following books quoted on Quodid:

The Dispossessed