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Fantasy Is Not Antirational, But Pararational; Not Realistic But Surrealistic, A Heightening Of Reality. In Freud's Terminology, It Employs Primary Not Secondary Process Thinking. It Employs Archetypes Which, As Jung Warned Us, Are Dangerous Things. Fantasy Is Nearer To Poetry, To Mysticism, And To Insanity Than Naturalistic Fiction Is. It Is A Wilderness, And Those Who Go There Should Not Feel Too Safe.

-Ursula K. Le Guin

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Fantasy Is Not Antirational,

Ursula K. Le Guin

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Fantasy Is Not Antirational, But Pararational; Not Realistic But Surrealistic, A Heightening Of Reality. In Freud's Terminology, It Employs Primary Not Secondary Process Thinking. It Employs Archetypes Which, As Jung Warned Us, Are Dangerous Things. Fantasy Is Nearer To Poetry, To Mysticism, And To Insanity Than Naturalistic Fiction Is. It Is A Wilderness, And Those Who Go There Should Not Feel Too Safe.

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To Claim Power Over What You Do Not Understand Is Not Wise, Nor Is The End Of It Likely To Be Good.

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.

We're Each Of Us Alone, To Be Sure. What Can You Do But Hold Your Hand Out In The Dark?

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The Children Of The Revolution Are Always Ungrateful, And The Revolution Must Be Grateful That It Is So.

True Myths May Serve For Thousands Of Years As An Inexhaustible Source Of Intellectual Speculation, Religious Joy, Ethical Inquiry, And Artistic Renewal. The Real Mystery Is Not Destroyed By Reason. The Fake One Is. You Look At It And It Vanishes. You Look At The Blonde Hero-really Look-and He Turns Into A Gerbil. But You Look At Apollo, And He Looks Back At You. The Poet Rilke Looked At A Statue Of Apollo About Fifty Years Ago, And Apollo Spoke To Him. "you Must Change Your Life," He Said. When The True Myth Rises Into Consciousness, That Is Always Its Message. You Must Change Your Life.

Do Nothing Because It Is Righteous Or Praiseworthy Or Noble To Do So; Do Nothing Because It Seems Good To Do So; Do Only That Which You Must Do And Which You Cannot Do In Any Other Way.

There Are Two Kinds Of Knowledge, Local And Universal.

As A Man's Real Power Grows And His Knowledge Widens, Ever The Way He Can Follow Grows Narrower: Until At Last He Chooses Nothing,but Does Only And Wholly What He Must Do.

Love Is The True Condition Of Human Life.

To See A Candle's Light One Must Take It Into A Dark Place.

Between Thought And Spoken Word Is A Gap Where Intention Can Enter, The Symbol Be Twisted Aside, And The Lie Come To Be.

Hope Is A Slow Business.

To Be Oneself Is A Rare Thing, And A Great One.

Part Of The Particular Interest And Beauty Of Science Fiction And Fantasy: Writer And Reader Collaborate In World-making.

What Else Can The Young Be? When You Are On The Bottom, You Must Organize From The Bottom Up

Absolute Freedom Is Absolute Responsibility.

Absolute Freedom

Science Fiction Is Not Prescriptive; It Is Descriptive.

Science Fiction

The Reader Can't Take Much For Granted In A Fiction Where The Scenery Can Eat The Characters.

Hate Gets Going, It Goes Round, It Gets Older And Tighter And Older And Tighter, Until It Holds A Person Inside It Like A Fist Holds A Stick.

The Preservation Of Life Seems To Be Rather A Slogan Than A Genuine Goal Of The Anti-abortion Forces; What They Want Is Control. Control Over Behavior: Power Over Women. Women In The Anti-choice Movement Want To Share In Male Power Over Women, And Do So By Denying Their Own Womanhood, Their Own Rights And Responsibilities.

To Learn A Belief Without The Belief Is To Sing A Song Without The Tune.

The Reason Literacy Is Important Is That Literature Is The Operating Instructions. The Best Manual We Have. The Most Useful Guide To The Country We're Visiting, Life.

The Future Has Become Uninhabitable. Such Hopelessness Can Arise, I Think, Only From An Inability To Face The Present, To Live In The Present, To Live As A Responsible Being Among Other Beings In This Sacred World Here And Now, Which Is All We Have, And All We Need, To Found Our Hope Upon.

When Action Grows Unprofitable, Gather Information; When Information Grows Unprofitable, Sleep.

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.

If Science Fiction Is The Mythology Of Modern Technology, Then Its Myth Is Tragic.

Whenever They Tell Me Children Want This Sort Of Book And Children Need This Sort Of Writing, I Am Going To Smile Politely And Shut My Earlids. I Am A Writer, Not A Caterer. There Are Plenty Of Caterers. But What Children Most Want And Need Is What We And They Don't Know They Want And Don't Think They Need, And Only Writers Can Offer It To Them.

Art, Like Sex, Cannot Be Carried On Indefinitely Solo; After All, They Have The Same Enemy, Sterility.

Distrust Everything I Say. I Am Telling The Truth.

Telling The Truth

He Had Grown Up In A Country Run By Politicians Who Sent The Pilots To Man The Bombers To Kill The Babies To Make The World Safer For Children To Grow Up In.

Stories Are What Death Thinks He Puts An End To. He Can't Understand That They End In Him, But They Don't End With Him.

My Imagination Makes Me Human And Makes Me A Fool; It Gives Me All The World, And Exiles Me From It.

Life Rises Out Of Death, Death Rises Out Of Life; In Being Opposite They Yearn To Each Other, They Give Birth To Each Other And Are Forever Reborn. And With Them, All Is Reborn, The Flower Of The Apple Tree, The Light Of The Stars. In Life Is Death. In Death Is Rebirth. What Then Is Life Without Death? Life Unchanging, Everlasting, Eternal?-what Is It But Death-death Without Rebirth?

Fire And Fear, Good Servants, Bad Lords.

I Know That Nobody Who Hasn't Been In Battle Or Under Attack Can Know What War Is. But Even In Terms Of Being Safe At Home, It's Also True That Many Americans Who Think They Know What Being At War Is, Don't. Including, Of Course, George W. Bush And His People. They Don't Have A Clue.

Love Doesn't Just Sit There, Like A Stone; It Has To Be Made, Like Bread, Remade All The Time, Made New.

My Soul Is Ten Thousand Miles Wide And Extremely Invisibly Deep. It Is The Same Size As The Sea, And You Cannot, You Cannot Cram It Into Beer Cans And Fingernails And Stake It Out In Lots And Own It. It Will Drown You All And Never Even Notice.

There Is No Information About Corporations. There Is Only Disinformation.

To Oppose Something Is To Maintain It.

Law Of Attraction

Those Who Dislike Fantasy Are Very Often Equally Bored Or Repelled By Science. They Don't Like Either Hobbits, Or Quasars; They Don't Feel At Home With Them; They Don't Want Complexities, Remoteness. If There Is Any Such Connection, I'll Bet That It Is Basically An Aesthetic One

My World, My Earth Is A Ruin. A Planet Spoiled By The Human Species. We Multiplied And Fought And Gobbled Until There Was Nothing Left, And Then We Died. We Controlled Neither Appetite Nor Violence; We Did Not Adapt. We Destroyed Ourselves. But We Destroyed The World First.

To See A Candle's Light, One Must Take It Into A Dark Place. This Is The Same As To See The Good And Be Grateful, One Must Compare And Contrast It With Something Worse - Not Better!

Sometimes A God Comes.... He Brings A New Way To Do A Thing, Or A New Thing To Be Done. A New Kind Of Singing, Or A New Kind Of Death. He Brings This Across The Bridge Between The Dream-time And The World-time. When He Has Done This, It Is Done. You Cannot Take Things That Exist In The World And Try To Drive Them Back Into The Dream, To Hold Them Inside The Dream With Walls And Pretenses. That Is Insanity. What Is, Is. There Is No Use Pretending, Now, That We Do Not Know How To Kill One Another.

The Same Old Hypocrisy. Life Is A Fight, And The Strongest Wins. All Civilization Does Is Hide The Blood And Cover Up The Hate With Pretty Words!

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