Ursula K. Le Guin (October 21, 1929 - January 22, 2018) Suffering is a misunderstanding… It exists… It’s real. I can call it a misunderstanding, but I can’t pretend that it doesn’t exist, or will ever cease to exist. Suffering is the condition on which we live. And when it comes, you know it. You …
Ursula K Le Guin On Love
Ursula K Le Guin (October 21, 1929 - January 22, 2018) There is no less or greater in an absolute thing. All or nothing at all, the true lover says, and that's the truth of it. My love will never die, he says. He claims eternity. And rightly. How can it die when it is …
Ursula K Le Guin On Suffering
Ursula K. Le Guin (October 21, 1929 - January 22, 2018) It is our suffering that brings us together. It is not love. Love does not obey the mind, and turns to hate when forced. The bond that binds us is beyond choice. We are brothers. We are brothers in what we share. In pain, …
Ursula K Le Guin On Beauty
Ursula K Le Guin (October 21, 1929 - January 22, 2018) For old people beauty doesn’t come free with the hormones, the way it does for the young… It has to do with who the person is.
Ursula K Le Guin On The Future
Ursula K Le Guin (October 21, 1929 - January 22, 2018) Anything at all can be said to happen [in the future] without fear of contradiction from a native. The future is a safe, sterile laboratory for trying out ideas in, a means of thinking about reality, a method.
Ursula K Le Guin On Time
Ursula K Le Guin (October 21, 1929 - January 22, 2018) The opposite of spare time is, I guess, occupied time. In my case I still don’t know what spare time is because all my time is occupied. It always has been and it is now. It’s occupied by living. An increasing part of living, …
Ursula K Le Guin On Old Age
Ursula K Le Guin (October 21, 1929 - January 22, 2018) If you eat your sardines and leafy greens and wear SPF 150 and develop your abs and blabs and slabs or whatever they are in order to live a long life, that’s good, and maybe it will work. But the longer a life …
Ursula K Le Guin On Information
Ursula K Le Guin (October 21, 1929 - January 22, 2018) Science describes accurately from outside, poetry describes accurately from inside. Science explicates, poetry implicates. Both celebrate what they describe. We need the languages of both science and poetry to save us from merely stockpiling endless “information” that fails to inform our ignorance or our …
Ursula K Le Guin On Love
Ursula K Le Guin (October 21, 1929 - January 22, 2018) There is no less or greater in an absolute thing. All or nothing at all, the true lover says, and that's the truth of it. My love will never die, he says. He claims eternity. And rightly. How can it die when it is …
Ursula K Le Guin On Perfection
Ursula K Le Guin (October 21, 1929 - January 22, 2018) Perfection is “lean” and “taut” and “hard” — like a boy athlete of twenty, a girl gymnast of twelve. What kind of body is that for a man of fifty or a woman of any age? “Perfect”? What’s perfect? A black cat on a …
Ursula K Le Guin On Anger
Ursula K Le Guin (October 21, 1929 - January 22, 2018) Anger is a useful, perhaps indispensable tool in motivating resistance to injustice. But I think it is a weapon — a tool useful only in combat and self-defense…Anger points powerfully to the denial of rights, but the exercise of rights can’t live and thrive …
Ursula K Le Guin Anger And Hatred
Ursula K Le Guin (October 21, 1929 - January 22, 2018) The racism, misogyny, and counter-rationality of the reactionary right in American politics for the last several years is a frightening exhibition of the destructive force of anger deliberately nourished by hate, encouraged to rule thought, invited to control behavior. I hope our republic survives …
