Ursula K Le Guin Quotes

The Sun Going SouthIn late sunshine I wander troubled.Restless I wander in autumn sunlight.Too many changes, partings, and deaths.Doors have closed that were always open.Trees that held the sky up are cut down.So much that I alone remember!This creek runs dry among its stones.Souls of the dead, come drink this water!Come into this side valley with me,a restless old woman, unseemly,troubled, walking on dry grass, dry stones.

Hideo," said my mother, in the terrifying way women have of passing without interval from one subject to another because they have them all present in their mind at once, "you haven't found any kind of relationship?

They praised his modesty and did not listen to him, for listening is a rare gift, and men will have their heroes.

Dragons think we are amusing. But they remember Erreth-Akbe. They speak of him as if he were a dragon, not a man.

We men dream dreams, we work magic, we do good, we do evil. The dragons do not dream. They are dreams. They do not work magic: it is their substance, their being. They do not do; they are.

Love that wants only to get, to possess, is a monstrous thing

With ceremony, with forms of politeness and reassurance, they borrowed the waters of the River and its little confluents to drink and be clean and irrigate with, using water mindfully, carefully. They lived in a land that answers greed with drought and death. A difficult land: aloof yet sensitive.

Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge); by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee, and are therefore more honored in their day than prophets); and by futurologists (salaried). Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying.