Books
Fantasy and science fiction icon Ursula K. Le Guin has just died at the age of 88. Every fantasy and science fiction reader knows Le Guin's name, even if they have yet to read her work. The author of acclaimed titles such as The Left Hand of Darkness, The Lathe of Heaven, and the Wizard of Earthsea series, Le Guin has been a pioneering female voice within fantasy and science fiction for decades, and her work has paved the way for the genre readers know today.
Le Guin has written over 20 novels, a dozen books of poetry, hundreds of short stories. seven collections of essays, 13 children's books, and five volumes of translation. Her work has been translated into over 40 languages.
Writing in genres dominated by men, Le Guin blazed her way forward, publishing work that challenged gender roles as well as the traditional tropes of sci-fi and fantasy. Her books were filled with dragons and spaceships, and all the things fantasy and sci-fi readers adore, and yet each one was unequivocally original. Her work always provided keen insights into the real world.
There is no doubt that Le Guin's imaginative pen and sharp mind will be missed by readers everywhere. Here are 15 quotes to celebrate the author and her amazing work.
“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, The Lathe of Heaven
“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed
“The creative adult is the child who has survived.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin
“People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks & Essays on the Writer, the Reader & the Imagination
“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
“We're each of us alone, to be sure. What can you do but hold your hand out in the dark?”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters, Volume 1
“To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
“I do not care what comes after; I have seen the dragons on the wind of morning.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore
“Truth is a matter of the imagination.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
“Belief is the wound that knowledge heals.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Telling
“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
“As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing a Bach suite participates, note by note, in the creation, the coming-to-be, the existence, of the music. And, as you read and re-read, the book of course participates in the creation of you, your thoughts and feelings, the size and temper of your soul.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin
“To light a candle is to cast a shadow...”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea
“A profound love between two people involves, after all, the power and chance of doing profound hurt.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
“Do nothing because it is righteous or praiseworthy or noble to do so; do nothing because it seems good to do so; do only that which you must do and which you cannot do in any other way.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore
