Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes

I’d rather get bad news from an honest man than lies from a flatterer,

...If at moments the facts seem to alter with an altered voice, why then you can choose the fact you like best; yet none of them are false, and it is all one story.

Oh, never and forever aren't for mortals, love. But we won't be parted till I know it's right that we part.

I was with you at the beginning of your journey. It is right that I should follow you to its end.

Only in silence the word, only in dark the light, only in dying life: bright the hawk's flight on the empty sky. — The Creation of Éa

Can you walk the road your dream goes?
Sometimes. Sometimes I am afraid to.
Who is not.
...

As she stumbled forward she cried out in her mind, which was as dark, as shaken as the subterranean vault, “Forgive me. O my Masters, O unnamed ones, most ancient ones, forgive me, forgive me!”
There was no answer. There had never been an answer.

“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.”

There must be darkness to see the stars.

There’s no way to use power for good.

In so far as one denies what is, one is possessed by what is not, the compulsions, the fantasies, the terrors that flock to fill the void.

Indeed, until she had met Lev at school, it had not occurred to her that anyone might prefer to speak a plain fact rather than a lie that sounded well. People said what suited their purposes, when they were serious; and when they weren’t serious, they talked without meaning anything at all.

"Her concern with landscapes and living creatures was passionate. This concern, feebly called, "the love of nature" seemed to Shevek to be something much broader than love. There are souls, he thought, whose umbilicus has never been cut. They never got weaned from the universe. They do not understand death as an enemy; they look forward to rotting and turning into humus. It was strange to see Takver take a leaf into her hand, or even a rock. She became an extension of it, it of her."

The dance of renewal, the dance that made the world, was always danced here at the edge of things, on the brink, on the foggy coast.

Before the gods and after, always, are the streams. Caves, stones, hills. Trees. The earth. The darkness of the earth.