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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.

-Ursula K. Le Guin

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True Myths May Serve

Ursula K. Le Guin

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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.

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First Sentences Are Doors To Worlds.

What Is Love Of One's Country; Is It Hate Of One's Uncountry? Then It's Not A Good Thing.

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The World Is In Balance . To Light A Candle Is To Cast A Shadow.

The Law Of Evolution Is That The Strongest Survives!' 'yes, And The Strongest, In The Existence Of Any Social Species, Are Those Who Are Most Social. In Human Terms, Most Ethical...there Is No Strength To Be Gained From Hurting One Another. Only Weakness.

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When In The Land Of Property Think Like A Propertarian. Dress Like One, Eat Like One, Act Like One, Be One.

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

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By Such Literalism, Fundamentalism, Religions Betrayed The Best Intentions Of Their Founders. Reducing Thought To Formula, Replacing Choice By Obedience, These Preachers Turned The Living Word Into Dead Law.

To Exhibit The Perfect Uselessness Of Knowing The Answer To The Wrong Question.

There Are Things That Outweigh Comfort, Unless One Is An Old Woman Or A Cat.

The Old Knowledge Had Been Difficult But Not Distressing. It Had Been All Paradox And Myth, And It Had Made Sense. The New Knowledge Was All Fact And Reason, And It Made No Sense.

Sleeping People Are So Remote.... Right Here, But Out Of Communication. That's What Strikes Humans As Uncanny About Sleep. Its Utter Privacy. The Sleeper Turns His Back On Everyone.

Even A Poet Cannot Get Everything Right.

You Cannot Buy The Revolution. You Cannot Make The Revolution. You Can Only Be The Revolution. It Is In Your Spirit, Or It Is Nowhere.

If Civilization Has An Opposite, It Is War.

I Believe That Maturity Is Not An Outgrowing, But A Growing Up: That An Adult Is Not A Dead Child, But A Child Who Survived.

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

But It Doesn't Take A Thousand Men To Open A Door, My Lord." "it Might To Keep It Open.

We Have Been Civilized For A Thousand Millennia. We Have Histories Of Hundreds Of Those Millennia. We Have Tried Everything. Anarchism, In All Its Forms, With The Rest. But I Have Not Tried It. They Say There Is Nothing New Under Any Sun. But If Each Life Is Not New, Each Single Life, Then Why Are We Born?

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.

Well, The Secret To Writing Is Writing. It's Only A Secret To People Who Don't Want To Hear It. Writing Is How You Be A Writer.

When The Enemy Enthusiastically Embraces You, And The Fellow Countrymen Bitterly Reject You, It Is Hard Not To Wonder If You Are, In Fact, A Traitor.

It Is Not Altogether A Bad Thing To Have Criminal Ancestors. An Arsonist Grandfather May Bequeath One A Nose For Smelling Smoke.

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

Nothing Is Yours. It Is To Use. It Is To Share. If You Will Not Share It, You Cannot Use It.

The Light Is The Left Hand Of Darkness.

For A Fiction Writer, A Storyteller, The World Is Full Of Stories, And When A Story Is There, It's There, And You Just Reach Up And Pick It.

As You See, I Bear Some Resentment And Some Scars From The Years Of Anti-genre Bigotry. My Own Fiction, Which Moves Freely Around Among Realism, Magical Realism, Science Fiction, Fantasy Of Various Kinds, Historical Fiction, Young Adult Fiction, Parable, And Other Subgenres, To The Point Where Much Of It Is Ungenrifiable, All Got Shoved Into The Sci Fi Wastebasket Or Labeled As Kiddilit - Subliterature.

The Trouble Is That We Have A Bad Habit, Encouraged By Pedants And Sophisticates, Of Considering Happiness As Something Rather Stupid. Only Pain Is Intellectual, Only Evil Interesting. This Is The Treason Of The Artist: A Refusal To Admit The Banality Of Evil And The Terrible Boredom Of Pain.

What Good Is Power When You're Too Wise To Use It?

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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.

I Don't Want To Be A Propagandist, No Matter How Good The Cause. I Want To Tell Stories. It's Just That The Stories Have To Square With My Consciousness As A Woman And My Conscience As A Human Being.

It Is A Real Wilderness, And Those Who Go There Should Not Feel Too Safe.

It Is A Terrible Thing, This Kindess That Human Beings Do Not Lose. Terrible, Because When We Are Finally Naked In The Dark And Cold, It Is All We Have. We Who Are So Rich, So Full Of Strength, We End Up With That Small Change. We Have Nothing Else To Give.

Writing Makes No Noise, Except Groans, And It Can Be Done Everywhere, And It Is Done Alone.

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To Have A Choice At All Is To Be Privileged.

We Need Writers Who Know The Difference Between The Production Of A Commodity And The Practice Of An Art.

To Know There Is A Choice Is To Have To Make The Choice: Change Or Stay: River Or Rock.

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.

It Was Men's Ambitions, They Said, That Had Perverted All The Arts To Ends Of Gain.

Skill In Writing Frees You To Write What You Want To Write. It May Also Show You What You Want To Write. Craft Enables Art.

The Notion That A Story Has A Message Assumes That It Can Be Reduced To A Few Abstract Words, Neatly Summarized In A School Or College Examination Paper Or A Brisk Critical Review.

Art Is Craft: All Art Is Always And Essentially A Work Of Craft: But In The True Work Of Art, Before The Craft And After It, Is Some Essential Durable Core Of Being, Which Is What The Craft Works On, And Shows, And Sets Free. The Statue In The Stone. How Does The Artist Find That, See It, Before It's Visible? That Is A Real Question.

I Think There Is No Way To Write About Being Alone. To Write Is To Tell Something To Somebody To Communicate To Others. . . . Solitude Is Noncommunication, The Absence Of Others, The Presence Of A Self Sufficient To Itself.

Fantasy Is Probably The Oldest Literary Device For Talking About Reality.

Despair Speaks Evenly, In A Quiet Voice.

Virginity Is Now A Mere Preamble Or Waiting Room To Be Got Out Of As Soon As Possible; It Is Without Significance. Old Age Is Similarly A Waiting Room, Where You Go After Life's Over And Wait For Cancer Or A Stroke. The Years Before And After The Menstrual Years Are Vestigial: The Only Meaningful Condition Left To Women Is That Of Fruitfulness.

Paradise Is For Those Who Make Paradise.

When People Say, Did You Always Want To Be A Writer?, I Have To Say No! I Always Was A Writer.

Science Fiction - And The Correct Shortcut Is 'sf' - Uses Actual Scientific Facts Or Theories For The Source Ideas Or Framework Of The Story. It Has Some Scientific Content, However Speculative. If It Breaks A Law Of Physics, It Knows It's Doing So And Follows Up The Consequences. If It Invents A Society Of Aliens, It Does So With Some Respect For And Knowledge Of The Social Sciences And What You Might Call Social Probabilities. And Some Of It Is Literarily Self-aware Enough To Treat Its Metaphors As Metaphors.

Translation Is Entirely Mysterious. Increasingly I Have Felt That The Art Of Writing Is Itself Translating, Or More Like Translating Than It Is Like Anything Else

A Writer Is A Person Who Cares What Words Mean, What They Say, How They Say It. Writers Know Words Are Their Way Towards Truth And Freedom, And So They Use Them With Care, With Thought, With Fear, With Delight. By Using Words Well They Strengthen Their Souls. Story-tellers And Poets Spend Their Lives Learning That Skill And Art Of Using Words Well. And Their Words Make The Souls Of Their Readers Stronger, Brighter, Deeper.

Progress Means Nothing To Presence.

Our Roots Are In The Dark; The Earth Is Our Country. Why Did We Look Up For Blessing -- Instead Of Around, And Down? What Hope We Have Lies There. Not In The Sky Full Of Orbiting Spy-eyes And Weaponry, But In The Earth We Have Looked Down Upon. Not From Above, But From Below. Not In The Light That Blinds, But In The Dark That Nourishes, Where Human Beings Grow Human Souls.

I Went To The Springs While The Sun Was Still Up, And Sitting On A Rocky Outcrop Above The Cave Mouth I Watched The Light Grow Reddish Across The Misty Pools, And Listened To The Troubled Voice Of The Water. After A While I Moved Farther Up The Hill, Where I Could Hear Birds Singing Near And Far In The Silence Of The Trees. The Presence Of The Trees Was Very Strong...the Big Oaks Stood So Many, So Massive In Their Other Life, In Their Deep, Rooted Silence: The Awe Of Them Came On Me, The Religion.

Do You See, Arren, How An Act Is Not, As Young Men Think, Like A Rock That One Picks Up And Throws, And It Hits Or Misses, And That's The End Of It. When That Rock Is Lifted, The Earth Is Lighter; The Hand That Bears It Is Heavier. When It Is Thrown, The Circuits Of The Stars Respond, And Where It Strikes Or Falls The Universe Is Changed.

If You're A Fiction Writer, Though, I Can Tell You How To Let People Talk Through You. Listen. Just Be Quiet, And Listen. Let The Character Talk. Don't Censor, Don't Control. Listen, And Write.

You Must Come To Terms With Your Wholeself. The Wholeness Which Exceeds All Our Virtue And All Our Vice.

If You Want Your Writing To Be Taken Seriously, Don't Marry And Have Kids, And Above All, Don't Die. But If You Have To Die, Commit Suicide. They Approve Of That.

The Only Thing That Makes Life Possible Is Permanent, Intolerable Uncertainty; Not Knowing What Comes Next.

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

Now They Came Back To Him, On This Night He Was Seventeen Years Old. All The Years And Places Of His Brief Broken Life Came Within Mind's Reach And Made A Whole Again. He Knew Once More, At Last, After This Long, Bitter, Waisted Time, Who He Was And Where He Was. But Where He Must Go In The Years To Come, That He Could Not See; And He Feared To See It.

The Living Tongue That Tells The Word, The Living Ear That Hears It, Bind And Bond Us In The Communion We Long For In The Silence Of Our Inner Solitude.

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.

People Who Deny The Existence Of Dragons Are Often Eaten By Dragons. From Within.

Go To Bed; Tired Is Stupid.

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Johann Sebastian Bach

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