Ursula K. Le Guin
Ursula K. Le Guin
Ursula Kroeber Le Guinis 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. First published in the 1960s, her work has often depicted futuristic or imaginary alternative worlds in politics, the natural environment, gender, religion, sexuality and ethnography...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth21 October 1929
CountryUnited States of America
meaningful cancer years
Virginity is now a mere preamble or waiting room to be got out of as soon as possible; it is without significance. Old age is similarly a waiting room, where you go after life's over and wait for cancer or a stroke. The years before and after the menstrual years are vestigial: the only meaningful condition left to women is that of fruitfulness.
eye technology hands
It is only when science asks why, instead of simply describing how, that it becomes more than technology. When it asks why, it discovers Relativity. When it only shows how, it invents the atom bomb, and then puts its hands over its eye and says, My God what have I done?
self self-destruction destruction
Great self-destruction follows upon unfounded fear.
book airports sita
The airport bookstore did not sell books, only bestsellers, which Sita Dulip cannot read without risking a severe systemic reaction.
knowing perfect answers
To exhibit the perfect uselessness of knowing the answer to the wrong question.
thinking stories ends
Stories are what death thinks he puts an end to. He can't understand that they end in him, but they don't end with him.
communication winning simple
It win be a device that will permit communication without any time interval between two points in space. The device will not transmit messages, of course; simultaneity is identity. But to our perceptions, that simultaneity will function as a transmission, a sending. So we will be able to use it to talk between worlds, without the long waiting for the message to go and the reply to return that electromagnetic impulses require. It is really a very simple matter. Like a kind of telephone.
people ignorant taught
How can people be anything but ignorant when knowledge isn't saved, isn't taught?
lying belief
Belief in the lie is the life of the lie.
cat comfort old-woman
There are things that outweigh comfort, unless one is an old woman or a cat.
doors firsts world
First sentences are doors to worlds.
mind trying goodness
The danger in trying to do good is that the mind comes to confuse the intent of goodness with the act of doing things well.
teaching writing marketing
If success in selling is my primary interest, I am not primarily a writer, but a salesperson. If I teach success in selling as the writer's primary objective, I am not teaching writing; I'm teaching, or pretending to teach, the production and marketing of a commodity.
lying believe defense
... the habit of literature [is] the best defense against believing the half-truths of ideologues and the lies of demagogues.