Leguin Quotes & Sayings

Become at ease with the state of "not knowing. — Eckhart Tolle

I had no training in research as such, and as a consequence, I am, in a sense, self-taught. — Yves Chauvin

Don't try to hurt anyone, you will not succeed because you can hurt only yourself. — Debasish Mridha

My mother said the bizarre name Raccoona had surely been inspired, at least on a subliminal level, by the masks raccoons don't wear but simply have - the ones given them by nature ... [S]he pointed out that Le Guin had suspected all along that Raccoona and Tiptree were two authors that came from the same source, but in a letter to Alice she wrote that she preferred Tiptree to Raccoona: 'Raccoona, I think, has less control, thus less wit and power.'
Le Guin, Mother said, had understood something deep. 'When you take on a male persona, something happens.'
When I asked her what that was, she sat back in her chair, waved her arm, and smiled. 'You get to be the father. — Siri Hustvedt

Whenever I see a Frans Hals I feel like painting, but when I see a Rembrandt I feel like giving up! — Max Liebermann

Please bring strange things.
Please come bringing new things.
Let very old things come into your hands.
Let what you do not know come into your eyes.
Let desert sand harden your feet.
Let the arch of your feet be the mountains.
Let the paths of your fingertips be your maps
And the ways you go be the lines of your palms.
Let there be deep snow in your inbreathing
And your outbreath be the shining of ice.
May your mouth contain the shapes of strange words.
May you smell food cooking you have not eaten.
May the spring of a foreign river be your navel.
May your soul be at home where there are no houses.
Walk carefully, well-loved one,
Walk mindfully, well-loved one,
Walk fearlessly, well-loved one.
Return with us, return to us,
Be always coming home.
Ursula K. Leguin — Ursula K. Le Guin

I suppose if I was to have to pick a few, Ursula LeGuin would have to top the list. It was while reading her work that I decided I wanted to be an author. — Sarah Zettel

Even the best scientists are often insecure and feel the need for recognition. — Venkatraman Ramakrishnan

Right now a lot of people are still choosing to go to Toronto instead of shooting in New York City, something I haven't done and something I hope I'll never have to do. — Spike Lee

Just because you're grown up and then some doesn't mean settling into the doldrums of predictability. Surprise people. Surprise yourself. (281) — Victoria Moran

I can resolve your perplexity,' said Fianosther. 'Your booth occupies the site of the old gibbet, and has absorbed unlucky essences. But I thought to notice you examining the manner in which the timbers of my booth are joined. You will obtain a better view from within, but first I must shorten the chain of the captive erb which roams the premises during the night.'

'No need,' said Cugel. 'My interest was cursory. — Jack Vance

He tried to read an elementary economics text; it bored him past endurance, it was like listening to somebody interminably recounting a long and stupid dream. He could not force himself to understand how banks functioned and so forth, because all the operations of capitalism were as meaningless to him as the rites of a primitive religion, as barbaric, as elaborate, and as unnecessary. In a human sacrifice to deity there might be at least a mistaken and terrible beauty; in the rites of the moneychangers, where greed, laziness, and envy were assumed to move all men's acts, even the terrible became banal. — Ursula K. Le Guin

I didn't read much SF as a kid - I was a total Tolkien geek - but I started reading Samuel Delany and Angela Carter and Ursula LeGuin in high school, and I was definitely taken with the notion that here was a literature that could explore various notions of gender identity and how it affects the culture at large. — Elizabeth Hand

I think people are very brave and often are a lot more frightened than they're allowed to admit. Life is much harder to live for most people than we want to admit. And so many things take a summoning up of courage. It makes one's own life a little bit easier when you can acknowledge that.
-Ursula LeGuin, interviewed by — Brenda Peterson

The great question in life is the suffering we cause, and the most ingenious metaphysics do not justify the man who has broken the heart that loved him. — Benjamin Constant

If you make Josh's dumb white- chocolate cranberry cookies and not my fruitcake ones, it's over. — Jenny Han

I would say that most of my books are contemporary realistic fiction ... a couple, maybe three, fall into the 'historic fiction' category. Science fiction is not a favorite genre of mine, though I have greatly enjoyed some of the work of Ursula LeGuin. I haven't read much science fiction so I don't know other sci-fi authors. — Lois Lowry

Experimentation and Adaptation The best, most solid way out of a crisis in a changing market is through experiment and adaptation. - Richard's Blog, November 27, 2008 — Danielle McLimore

Well, to be honest, I was planning to woo you with my banana nut bread, but that shit ain't happening now. So all I have left is my delicious eggs."
... "It's really good, but you're not wooing me."
"Oh, I'm wooing ... It's all about the stealth. You don't realize it yet. — J. Lynn

I have a bad habit of dropping verbal pellets to get a reaction, like Ursula LeGuin's "A novelist's business is lying" (that particular one got a lot of attention on Facebook), or, "Why is it that Christians hate the word 'sex'? — Chila Woychik