Gethenians could make their vehicles go faster, but they do not. If asked why not, they answer “Why?” Like asking Terrans why all our vehicles must go so fast; we answer “Why not?” No disputing tastes. Terrans tend to feel they’ve got to get ahead, make progress. The people of Winter, who always live in the Year One, feel that progress is less important than presence.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes

It was very late when they realized it was late.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

All men were alien to one another, at times.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

But in time nothing can be without becoming.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

Good night, Ai” said the alien, and the other alien said, “Good night, Harth.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

Nobody can explain a dragon.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

Touch was a main channel of communication among the forest people. Among Terrans touch is always likely to imply threat, aggression, and so for them there is often nothing between the formal handshake and the sexual caress. All that blank was filled by the Athsheans with varied customs of touch.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

Fear, in a person of my temperament, is endemic and inevitable, and I can’t do much about it except recognize it for what it is and try not to let it rule me entirely. If I’m in an angry mood and aware of it, I can ask myself, So what is it your afraid of? That gives me a place to look at my anger from. Sometimes it helps me get into clearer air.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

Terran man was clay, red dust. Athshean man was branch and root. They did not carve figures of themselves in stone, only in wood.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

They were not listening – only waiting for him to be done talking.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

But why hate? Hate is not functional. Why are we taught it?

— Ursula K. Le Guin

The grave is without egg.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

There again was the delight, the courage, that is most admirable in the Karhidish spirit – and in the human spirit – and though I could not share it with him, to deny it would be a detestable act. I said, without sincerity, but with absolute truth, “It is a marvelous thing indeed for them as well, the coming to a new world, a new mankind.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

In this barbaric society, when women speak truly they speak subversively.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

Sun shrunk to moon. Cold comes soon.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

He stands higher than we stand, seeing wider, but he is himself only the height of a man.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

It happens sometimes between two people: there are no barriers, no defenses.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

You learn to say goodbye to places, to keep them in your heart and go on. Over the hills and a great way off.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

I run no more; the winds dance me.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

Despite what some adults seem to think, teenagers are fully human. And some of them read as intensely and keenly as if their life depended on it. Sometimes maybe it does.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

There was a wall. It did not look important. It was built of uncut rocks roughly mortared.

— Ursula K. Le Guin
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