Top 100 Ursula's Quotes
#1. It's funny, isn't it," Miss Woolf whispered in Ursula's ear, "how much German music we listen to. Great beauty transcends all. Perhaps after the war it will heal all too.
Kate Atkinson
#2. He noticed that Ursula's ox-eye daisies, wrapped in damp newspaper, were drooping, almost dead. Nothing could be kept, he thought, everything ran through one's fingers like sand or water. Or time. Perhaps nothing should be kept.
Kate Atkinson
#3. And with trembling, excited hands she put the coveted stockings under Ursula's pillow.
'One gets the greatest joy of all out of really lovely stockings,' said Ursula.
'One does,' replied Gudrun; 'the greatest joy of all.
D.H. Lawrence
#4. Jose Arcadio Buendia took his wife's words literally. He looked out the window and saw the barefoot children in the sunny garden and he had the impression that only at that instant had they begun to exist, conceived by Ursula's spell.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
#5. Ursula's heart tripped and skipped and flipped at the sight of him. The very object of her affection! The reason she had taken the long way round was on the unlikely chance that she might engineer an "accidental" meeting with Benjamin Cole. And here he was! What luck.
Kate Atkinson
#6. There's this really good line in 'Women in Love' where Ursula says, 'I always thought it was a sin to be unhappy.' And actually I think that's very common, it's what a lot of people feel - that you have an obligation to life to be happy if you can.
Rachel Cusk
#8. What's needed in this case is conscious and serious practice in hearing, and using, and being used by, other people's voices.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#10. There's a great fear of the imagination. It's a dangerous thing. It's out of control, it's subversive.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#13. You can't change anything from the outside in. Standing apart, looking down, talking the overview, you see pattern. What's wrong, what's missing. You want to fix it. But you can't patch it. You have to be in it, weaving it. You have to be part of the weaving.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#14. 'Banished men should never speak their native tongue; it comes bitter from their mouth. And this language suits a traitor better, I think; drips off one's teeth like sugar-syrup.'
Ursula K. Le Guin
#15. So we have this eyesore on the property.
No, it's not the beagle. I can understand why you'd think that, though.
Ursula Vernon
#16. And that's how Snuggles the hamster learned that yes, things COULD always get worse.
Ursula Vernon
#17. I've been looking only at what's to be done next and forgetting why we're doing it.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#18. In diversity is life and where there's life there's hope, was the general sum of his creed, a modest one to be sure.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#19. Laws are made against the impulse a people most fears in itself. Do not kill was the Shing's vaunted single Law. All else was permitted: which meant, perhaps, there was little else they really wanted to do ...
Ursula K. Le Guin
#20. The only problem is whether one adds life to one's years or years to one's life.
Ursula Parrott
#21. I think ... you should have children, John." At least he's no longer talking about bugs.
"I'm too young, Dad."
"It's the most important thing ... I've done in ... my life.
Ursula Hegi
#22. I'm less concerned about whether being a good corporate citizen burnishes a company's reputation. That's just an added benefit. I believe it's a responsibility, and there is no negotiating on responsibilities.
Ursula Burns
#23. Why must there be war?" "Oh Lavinia, what a woman's question that is! Because men are men.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#24. Every now and again, a painting will get away from my control and take over. Sometimes it's a good thing. Sometimes it's a giant drooling hairy thing with pointy teeth. You know how it is.
Ursula Vernon
#25. Before the moon I am, what a woman is, a woman of power, a woman's power, deeper than the roots of trees, deeper than the roots of islands, older than the Making, older than the moon.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#26. It was not in Raj Lyubov's nature to think, "What can I do?" Character and training disposed him not to interfere in other men's business. His job was to find out what they did, and his inclination was to let them go on doing it.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#28. There's a saying," Aeneas said: "Keep an eye on Greeks when they offer gifts." He spoke wryly. "Horses, particularly.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#29. They all chose Indian names for themselves. Teddy was Little Fox ("Naturally," Ursula said). Nancy was Little Wolf ("Honiahaka" in Cheyenne, Mrs. Shawcross said. She had a book she referred to). Mrs. Shawcross herself was Great White Eagle ("Oh, for heaven's sake," Sylvie said, "talk about hubris").
Kate Atkinson
#30. I think men mostly have to learn to be anarchists. Women don't have to learn."
Vokep shook his head grimly. "It's the kids," he said. "Having babies. Makes 'em propertarians. They won't let go." He sighed. "Touch and go, brother, that's the rule. Don't ever let yourself be owned.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#31. There is a bird in a poem by T. S. Eliot who says that mankind cannot bear very much reality; but the bird is mistaken. A man can endure the entire weight of the universe for eighty years. It is unreality that he cannot bear.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#32. A story rises from the springs of creation, from the pure will to be; it tells itself; I takes its own course, finds its own way, its own words; and the writer's job is to be its medium.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#33. A wizard's power of Changing and of Summoning can shake the balance of the world. It is dangerous, that power. It is most perilous. It must follow knowledge, and serve need. To light a candle is to cast a shadow ...
Ursula K. Le Guin
#34. I forgot, being too interested myself, that he's a king, and does not see things rationally, but as a king. All I've told him means to him simply that his power is threatened, his kingdom is a dust mote in space, his kingship is a joke to men who rule a hundred worlds.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#37. Ursula found herself dwelling on Hugh's death, his absence more than his death.
Kate Atkinson
#38. Father, what are you to do now?"
Triton's sneer grew scarier. "She broke the law." turning away from the terrified faces of his daughters. "She must die.
Khalia Hades
#39. For heroes do not make history - that is the historian's job - but, passive, let themselves be borne along, swept up to the crest of the tide of change, of chance, of war.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#40. There's so much that we just accept, but the reasons behind how certain rules came to be are so fascinating and funny, it just increases your affection for language.
Ursula Dubosarsky
#41. I'm old to be raising a child. And she ... She obeys me, but only because she wants to."
"It's the only justification for obedience," Ged observed.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#42. Other people's stories may become part of your own, the foundation of it, the ground it goes on.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#43. You know there's always prejudice in a revolutionary movement.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#44. Sweet sixteen," Hugh said, kissing her affectionately. "Happy birthday, little bear. Your future's all ahead of you." Ursula still harbored the feeling that some of her future was also behind her but she had learned not to voice such things.
Kate Atkinson
#45. She really was pretty, for a grown-up, but when you are seven, beauty is an abstraction, not an imperative.
Neil Gaiman
#46. Who knows a man's name, holds that man's life in his keeping. Thus to Ged, who had lost faith in himself, Vetch had given him that gift that only a friend can give, the proof of unshaken, unshakeable trust.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#47. Am I supposed to feel so much awe and so on about the Godking? After all, he's just a man ... He's about fifty years old, and he's bald. And I'll bet he has to cut his toenails too like any other man. I know perfectly well he's a god, too. But what I think is, he'll be much godlier after he's dead.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#48. The grave's a fine and quiet place but none I think do finish their books from there.
Ursula Nordstrom
#49. For storms will rage and oceans roar,
When Gabriel stands on sea and shore,
And as he blows his wondrous horn,
Old worlds die and new be born.
Deborah Harkness
#51. I don't write for an audience. I write for myself. And if I imagine an audience at all, it's the characters, but I know that I would keep writing even if no one ever published me again, even if no one ever read me again.
Ursula Hegi
#52. I'll die, you'll die; how could we love each other otherwise? The sun's going to burn out, what else keeps it shining?
Ursula K. Le Guin
#53. To go under a river: there's a strange thing to do, a really weird idea.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#54. George, it's impossible to correct a defective reality-orientation overnight.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#55. If I had to pick a hero, it would be Charles Darwin
the size of his mind, which included all that scientific curiosity and knowledge seeking, and the ability to put it all together. There is a genuine spirituality about Darwin's thinking.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#56. To use the enemy's weapon is to play the enemy's game ... speak the truth and hear the truth.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#57. There's another option. You can consider the reader, not as a helpless victim or a passive consumer, but as an active, intelligent, worthy collaborator. A colluder, a coillusionist.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#58. The weather bureau will tell you what next Tuesday will be like, and the Rand Corporation will tell you what the twenty-first century will be like. I don't recommend that you turn to the writers of fiction for such information. It's none of their business.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#59. The premise is: everybody's like me and we all think alike.
The corollary is: people who don't think like me don't matter.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#60. 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.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#61. So rest a while, we can talk in the cool of the evening. Or the cool of the morning. There 's seldom as much hurry as I used to think there was.
-Hawk
Who had been Archmage
The Other Wind
Ursula K. Le Guin
#62. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful the earth is, is to see it as the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#63. To make something well is to give yourself to it, to seek wholeness, to follow spirit. To learn to make something well can take your whole life. It's worth it.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#64. Success is somebody else's failure. Success is the American Dream we can keep dreaming because most people in most places, including thirty million of ourselves, live wide awake in the terrible reality of poverty.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#66. Take the tale in your teeth, then, and bite till the blood runs, hoping it's not poison.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#67. Even if you have $20,000 to buy an item, you still try to get a good price at antique stores. I collect furniture, rugs, paintings, frames. It's my hobby to go around to shops and markets.
Ursula Andress
#68. Belief in heaven and hell is a big deal in Judaism , Christianity , and Islam , and some forms of doctrinaire Buddhism . For the rest of us it's simply meaningless. We don't live in order to die, we live in order to live.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#69. Lovers remain in each other's energy fields for 21 days after intercourse. Renewed with each act. Do the math. Choose wisely ... otherwise you're carrying that stink with you for a long time ... Stop having sex right now! ... All of you. Until you know you're not giving yourselves away. - Sheerah
Sharon Weil
#71. To him a thinking man's job was not to deny one reality at the expense of the other, but to include and to connect.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#72. Ursula, we have to talk ... ' he said, almost blurting. He couldn't believe he was in the "we have to talk" position. It was so unnerving. 'I have to ask you ... Let's be each other's emergency contact numbers.' This was his first concession towards commitment.
Sharon Weil
#73. A person is defined solely by the extent of his influence over other people, by the sphere of his interrelationships; and morality is an utterly meaningless term unless defined as the good one does to others, the fulfilling of one's function in the sociopolitical whole.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#74. Only in silence the word, only in dark the light, only in dying life: bright the hawk's flight on the empty sky.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#75. What's wrong with pleasure, Takver? why don't you want it?"
"Nothing's wrong with it. And I do want it. Only I don't need it. And if I take what I don't need, I'll never get to what I do need.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#77. Lord Berosty rem ir Ipe came to Thangering Fastness and offered forty beryls and half the year's yield from his orchards as the price of a Foretelling, and the price was acceptable. He set his question to the Weaver Odren, and the question was, On what day shall I die?
Ursula K. Le Guin
#78. Here you think the incentive to work is finances, need for money or desire for profit, but where there's no money the real motives are clearer, maybe. people like to do things. They like to do them well.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#79. Contrast J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. The author adopts the childish view of adults as inhumanly powerful and uncomprehending, and never goes beyond it; and so his novel, published for adults, is better appreciated by ten-year-olds. The
Ursula K. Le Guin
#80. Readers, after all, are making the world with you. You give them the materials, but it's the readers who build that world in their own minds.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#81. My Real Children starts quietly, then suddenly takes you on two roller-coaster rides at once, swooping dizzily through a double panorama and ending in a sort of super Sophie's Choice. A daring tour de force.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#82. 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.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#83. Heaven and earth
begin in the unnamed:
name's the mother
of the ten thousand things.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#84. Grandma Harken was sharpening her garden shears. Her hands slowed on the file and she said finally, "He'll get in trouble and he'll figure it out. Best to do it without us standing over him. It's the only way anybody ever learns to clean up after themselves.
Ursula Vernon
#86. Then Ged pitied her. She was like a white deer caged, like a white bird wing-clipped, like a silver ring in an old man's finger.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#87. It's going to be over soon, so I don't really have time to get busy.
Ursula Andress
#88. The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel. The rabbit shrieks dying in the green meadows. The mountains clench their great hands full of hidden fire. There are sharks in the sea, and there is cruelty in men's eyes.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#90. Let's take a minute to talk about spellbooks, since, in this day and age when magic is no longer taught in schools (or is, at best, an elective like Home Economics), very few people have the experience with spellbooks that they used to.
Ursula Vernon
#91. I have a bad habit of dropping verbal pellets to get a reaction, like Ursula LeGuin's "A novelist's business is lying" (that particular one got a lot of attention on Facebook), or, "Why is it that Christians hate the word 'sex'?
Chila Woychik
#92. The art of one's own time tends to be formidable ... because we have to learn how and where to take hold of it, what response is being asked of us, before we can get involved. It's truly new, and therefore truly a bit frightening.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#93. It's not a weapon or a woman can make a man, or magery either, or any power, anything but himself.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#94. We of Es Toch tell a little myth, which says that in the beginning the Creator told a great lie. For there was nothing at all, but the Creator spoke, saying, It exists. And behold, in order that the lie of God might be God's truth, the universe at once began to exist.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#95. Even in the obscure vast history of a planet the time it takes to make a forest counts. It takes a while. And not every planet can do it; it is no common effect, that tangling of the sun's first cool light in the shadow and complexity of innumberable wind-stirred branches.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#96. They made love. Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; re-made all the time, made new. When it was made, they lay in each other's arms, holding love, asleep.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#97. When we're done with it, we may find - if it's a good novel - that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have been changed a little, as if by having meet a new face, crossed a street we've never crossed before.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#98. Heartburn is how I recognize myself. It's how I know I feel like me. - Donny
Sharon Weil
#99. Hardly anybody ever writes anything nice about introverts. Extroverts rule. This is rather odd when you realise that about nineteen writers out of twenty are introverts. We are been taught to be ashamed of not being 'outgoing'. But a writer's job is ingoing.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#100. If eternity had a season, it would be midsummer. Autumn, winter, spring are all change and passage, but at the height of summer the year stands poised. It's only a passing moment, but even as it passes the heart knows it cannot change.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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