Ursula K. Le Guin
US-based author, known mostly for writing science fiction and fantasy.
Young he was not, so that one had to call him old, but the word did not suit him.
Sometimes one’s very angry and preaches, but I know that to clinch a point is to close it. To leave the reader free to decide what your work means, that’s the real art; it makes the work inexhaustible.
When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.
“Summon up a supper,” he said. “Oh, I could. On golden plates, if you like. But that’s illusion, and when you eat illusions you end up hungrier than before.”
Before the gods and after, always, are the streams. Caves, stones, hills. Trees. The earth. The darkness of the earth.
“There’s nothing to fear, Lebannen,” he said gently, mockingly. “They were only the dead.”
A person who believes, as she did, that things fit: that there is a whole of which one is a 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.
No, I don’t mean love, when I say patriotism. I mean fear. The fear of the other. And its expressions are political, not poetical: hate, rivalry, aggression. It grows in us, that fear. It grows in us year by year.
One man may as easily destroy, as govern: be King or Anti-King.
“In innocence there is no strength against evil,” said Sparrowhawk, a little wryly. “But there is strength in it for good.”
Injustice makes the rules, and courage breaks them.
“It is not right to want to die,” the Summoner said....“For the very old, the very ill, it may be. But life is given us. Surely it’s wrong not to hold and treasure that great gift!”
“Death also is given us,” said the king.
All I know is the dark, the night underground. And that’s all there really is. That’s all there is to know, in the end. The silence, and the dark. You know everything, wizard. But I know one thing—the one true thing!
Statesmen remember things selectively.
“For a word to be spoken,” Ged answered slowly, “there must be silence. Before, and after.” Then all at once he got up, saying, “I have no right to speak of these things. The word that was mine to say I said wrong. It is better that I keep still; I will not speak again. Maybe there is no true power but the dark.”
I forgot, being too interested myself, that he’s a king, and does not see things rationally, but as a king.
She knew it, but she did not want to know it.
The old knowledge had been difficult but not distressing. It had been all paradox and myth, and it had made sense. The new knowledge was all fact and reason, and it made no sense.
And I know that all I understand about living is having your work to do, and being able to do it. That’s the pleasure, and the glory, and all. And if you can’t do the work, or it’s taken from you, then what’s any good? You have to have something....
“Long ago we parted,” said the slight, still man of the Fiia. “Longer ago we were one. What we are not, they are. What we are, they are not. Think of the sunlight and the grass and the trees that bear fruit, Semley; think that not all roads that lead down lead up as well.”