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Writing Makes No Noise, Except Groans, And It Can Be Done Everywhere, And It Is Done Alone.
-Ursula K. Le Guin
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Writing Makes No Noise,

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

Understanding the Quote: "writing makes no noise, except groans, and it can be done everywhere,..."

This quote by Ursula K. Le Guin reflects deeply on the theme of writing. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Writing, Done, Noise, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Ursula K. Le Guin interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin is celebrated for insightful thoughts on writing and done. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Writing
Done
Noise
More From Ursula K. Le Guin
The Machine Conceals The Machinations.
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Living In A World That Is Valued Only As Gain, An Ever-expanding World-as-frontier That Has No Worth Of Its Own, No Fullness Of Its Own, You Live In Danger Of Losing Your Own Worth To Yourself. That's When You Begin To Listen To The Voices From The Other Side, And To Ask Questions Of Failure And The Dark.
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I Think The Mystery Of Art Lies In This, That Artists’ Relationship Is Essentially With Their Work — Not With Power, Not With Profit, Not With Themselves, Not Even With Their Audience.
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Change Is Freedom, Change Is Life. It's Always Easier Not To Think For Oneself. Find A Nice Safe Hierarchy And Settle In. Don't Make Changes, Don't Risk Disapproval, Don't Upset Your Syndics. It's Always Easiest To Let Yourself Be Governed. There's A Point, Around Age Twenty, When You Have To Choose Whether To Be Like Everybody Else The Rest Of Your Life, Or To Make A Virtue Of Your Peculiarities. Those Who Build Walls Are Their Own Prisoners. I'm Going To Go Fulfil My Proper Function In The Social Organism. I'm Going To Go Unbuild Walls.
Wall
Nice
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One Man May As Easily Destroy, As Govern: Be King Or Anti-king.
Kings
Men
May
There Is Not Much You Can Say About A Baby Unless You Are Talking With Its Father Or Another Mother Or Nurse; Infants Are Not Part Of The Realm Of Ordinary Language, Talk Is Inadequate To Them As They Are Inadequate To Talk.
Mother
Baby
Father
It Is Hard To Swear When Sex Is Not Dirty And Blasphemy Does Not Exist.
Sex
Dirty
Doe
A Profound Love Between Two People Involves, After All, The Power And Chance Of Doing Profound Hurt.
Life
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Two
He Knew Now, And The Knowledge Was Hard, That His Task Had Never Been To Undo What He Had Done, But To Finish What He Had Begun.
Tasks
Done
Hard
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.
Hate
Hatred
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In The Airport, Luggage-laden People Rush Hither And Yon Through Endless Corridors, Like Souls To Each Of Whom The Devil Has Furnished A Different, Inaccurate Map Of The Escape Route From Hell.
Airports
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Things Don't Have Purposes, As If The Universe Were A Machine, Where Every Part Has A Useful Function. What's The Function Of A Galaxy? I Don't Know If Our Life Has A Purpose And I Don't See That It Matters. What Does Matter Is That We're A Part. Like A Thread In A Cloth Or A Grass-blade In A Field. It Is And We Are. What We Do Is Like Wind Blowing On The Grass.
Wind Blowing
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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. I Believe That All The Best Faculties Of A Mature Human Being Exist In The Child. . . That One Of The Most Deeply Human, And Humane, Of These Faculties Is The Power Of Imagination.
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Art, Like Sex, Cannot Be Carried On Indefinitely Solo; After All, They Have The Same Enemy, Sterility.
Art
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I Do Not Care What Comes After; I Have Seen The Dragons On The Wind Of Morning.
Morning
Dragons
Wind
Dragons Are More Dangerous, And A Good Deal Commoner, Than Bears. Fantasy Is Nearer To Poetry, To Mysticism, And To Insanity Than Naturalistic Fiction Is. It Is A Real Wilderness, And Those Who Go There Should Not Feel Too Safe.
Real
Dragons
Insanity
What Goes Too Long Unchanged Destroys Itself.
Long
Most Civilisations, Perhaps, Look Shinier In General Terms And From Several Light-years Away.
Light
Years
Looks
In Many College English Courses The Words “myth” And “symbol” Are Given A Tremendous Charge Of Significance. You Just Ain’t No Good Unless You Can See A Symbol Hiding, Like A Scared Gerbil, Under Every Page. And In Many Creative Writing Course The Little Beasts Multiply, The Place Swarms With Them. What Does This Mean? What Does That Symbolize? What Is The Underlying Mythos? Kids Come Lurching Out Of Such Courses With A Brain Full Of Gerbils. And They Sit Down And Write A Lot Of Empty Pomposity, Under The Impression That That’s How Melville Did It.
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No Man, No Power, Can Bind The Action Of Wizardry Or Still The Words Of Power. For They Are The Very Words Of Making, And One Who Could Silence Them Could Unmake The World.
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Any Human Power Can Be Resisted And Changed By Human Beings
Divine Right
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The Word Must Be Heard In Silence; There Must Be Darkness To See The Stars.
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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.
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No Matter How Intelligent A Man Is, He Can't See What He Doesn't Know How To See.
Intelligent
Men
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It Is Very Hard For Evil To Take Hold Of The Unconsenting Soul.
Evil
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Men Call Women Faithless, Changeable, And Though They Say It In Jealousy Of Their Own Ever-threatened Sexual Honor, There Is Some Truth In It. We Can Change Our Life, Our Being; No Matter What Our Will Is, We Are Changed. As The Moon Changes Yet Is One, So We Are Virgin, Wife, Mother, Grandmother. For All Their Restlessness, Men Are Who They Are; Once They Put On The Man's Toga They Will Not Change Again; So They Make A Virtue Of That Rigidity And Resist Whatever Might Soften It And Set Them Free.
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She'll Die.' 'aye. That's A Consequence Of Being Alive.
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The Artist Deals With What Cannot Be Said In Words.
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If Your Voice Is Heard By More People Because You've Earned Some Kind Of Name And Fame, Your Silence On An Issue Of Urgent Moral Importance Is Even More Of A Betrayal. Privilege Is Obligation.
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I Had Forgotten How Much Light There Is In The World, Till You Gave It Back To Me.
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I Doubt That The Imagination Can Be Suppressed. If You Truly Eradicated It In A Child, He Would Grow Up To Be An Eggplant.
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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.
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If You Evade Suffering, You Also Evade The Chance Of Joy.
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Part Of The Particular Interest And Beauty Of Science Fiction And Fantasy: Writer And Reader Collaborate In World-making.
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What Good Is Music? None ... And That Is The Point. To The World And Its States And Armies And Factories And Leaders, Music Says, 'you Are Irrelevant'; And, Arrogant And Gentle As A God, To The Suffering Man It Says Only, 'listen.' For Being Saved Is Not The Point. Music Saves Nothing. Merciful, Uncaring, It Denies And Breaks Down All The Shelters, The Houses Men Build For Themselves, That They May See The Sky.
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Writers Need To Learn Their Trade, And How To Negotiate The Increasingly Difficult Marketplace. The Trade Can Be Taught And Learned Just As The Craft Can. But A Workshop Where The Trade Is The Principal Focus Of Interest Is Not A Writing Workshop. It Is A Business Class.
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Time Has Two Aspects. There Is The Arrow, The Running River, Without Which There Is No Change, No Progress, Or Direction, Or Creation. And There Is The Circle Or The Cycle, Without Which There Is Chaos, Meaningless Succession Of Instants, A World Without Clocks Or Seasons Or Promises.
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The Menopause Is Probably The Least Glamorous Topic Imaginable; And This Is Interesting, Because It Is One Of The Very Few Topics To Which Cling Some Shreds And Remnants Of Taboo. A Serious Mention Of Menopause Is Usually Met With Uneasy Silence; A Sneering Reference To It Is Usually Met With Relieved Sniggers. Both The Silence And The Sniggering Are Pretty Sure Indications Of Taboo.
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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.
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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.
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Ah, Genre. A Word Only A Frenchman Could Love.
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I Don't Believe That A Writer 'gets' (takes Into The Head) An 'idea' (some Sort Of Mental Object) 'from' Somewhere, And Then Turns It Into Words, And Writes Them On Paper. At Least In My Experience, It Doesn't Work That Way. The Stuff Has To Be Transformed Into Oneself, It Has To Be Composted, Before It Can Grow Into A Story.
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We Live In Capitalism. Its Power Seems Inescapable. So Did The Divine Right Of Kings.
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I Came Into Science Fiction At A Very Good Time, When The Doors Were Getting Thrown Open To All Kinds Of More Experimental Writing, More Literary Writing, Riskier Writing. It Wasn't All Imitation Heinlein Or Asimov. And Of Course, Women Were Creeping In, Infiltrating. Infesting The Premises.
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Prose Writers Are Interested Mostly In Life And Commas.
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There Is Neither Source Nor End, For All Things Are In The Center Of Time. As All The Stars May Be Reflected In A Round Raindrop Falling In The Night: So Too Do All The Stars Reflect The Raindrop. There Is Neither Darkness Nor Death, For All Things Are, In The Light Of The Moment, And Their End And Their Beginning Are One.
Stars
Fall
Night
Meeting Writers Is Always So Disappointing. I Got Over Wanting To Meet Live Writers Quite A Long Time Ago. There Is This Terrific Book That Has Changed Your Life, And Then You Meet The Author, And He Has Shifty Eyes And Funny Shoes And He Won't Talk About Anything Except The Injustice Of The United States Income Tax Structure Toward People With Fluctuating Income, Or How To Breed Black Angus Cows, Or Something.
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Eye
A Wrong That Cannot Be Repaired Must Be Transcended.
What Is An Anarchist? One Who, Choosing, Accepts The Responsibility Of Choice.
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Choices
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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.
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It Is Not Human To Be Without Shame And Without Desire.
Desire
Shame
Humans
You Know, I Don't Think A Lot About Why One Book Connects With Its Readers And Another Doesn't. Probably Because I Don't Want To Start Thinking, "am I Popular?" I Spent Way Too Much Time Thinking About That In High School.
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Science Fiction Properly Conceived, Like All Serious Fiction, However Funny, Is A Way Of Trying To Describe What Is In Fact Going On, What People Actually Do And Feel, How People Relate To Everything Else In This Vast Sack, This Belly Of The Universe, This Womb Of Things To Be And Tomb Of Things That Were, This Unending Story.
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... The Habit Of Literature [is] The Best Defense Against Believing The Half-truths Of Ideologues And The Lies Of Demagogues.
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Believe
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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.
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Sea
Soul
The Wise Needn't Ask, The Fool Asks In Vain.
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Fool
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Even In Merely Reading A Fairytale, We Must Let Go Our Daylight Convictions And Trust Ourselves To Be Guided By Dark Figures, In Silence; And When We Come Back, It May Be Very Hard To Describe Where We Have Been.
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As You Read A Book Word By Word And Page By Page, You Participate In Its Creation, Just As A Cellist Playing A Bach Suite Participates, Note By Note, In The Creation, The Coming-to-be, The Existence, Of The Music. And, As You Read And Re-read, The Book Of Course Participates In The Creation Of You, Your Thoughts And Feelings, The Size And Temper Of Your Soul.
Book
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Feelings
What Is More Arrogant Than Honesty?
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Arrogant
To See A Candle's Light One Must Take It Into A Dark Place.
Inspirational
Dark
Light
And Though I Came To Forget Or Regret All I Have Ever Done, Yet Would I Remember That Once I Saw The Dragons Aloft On The Wind At Sunset Above The Western Isles; And I Would Be Content.
Regret
Sunset
Dragons
How Can People Be Anything But Ignorant When Knowledge Isn't Saved, Isn't Taught?
People
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Taught
Maybe When You Meet The People You Are Supposed To Meet You Know It, Without Knowing It.
Knowing
People
Knows
Great Self-destruction Follows Upon Unfounded Fear.
Self
Self Destruction
Destruction
All Knowledge Is Partial, Infinitesimally Partial. Reason Is A Net Thrown Out Into An Ocean. What Truth It Brings In Is A Fragment, A Glimpse, A Scintillation Of The Whole Truth.
Ocean
Humility
Glimpse
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.
Success
Dream
Reality
But Now His Dry And Silent Grieving For His Lost Wife Must End, For There She Stood, The Fierce, Recalcitrant, And Fragile Stranger, Forever To Be Won Again.
Grieving
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Forever
We Sleep Researchers Like Cats, You Know; They Sleep A Lot!
Sleep
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If You Have To Find Devices To Coax Yourself To Stay Focused On Writing, Perhaps You Should Not Be Writing What You're Writing. And If This Lack Of Motivation Is A Constant Problem, Perhaps Writing Is Not Your Forte. I Mean, What Is The Problem? If Writing Bores You, That Is Pretty Fatal. If That Is Not The Case, But You Find That It Is Hard Going And It Just Doesn't Flow, Well, What Did You Expect? It Is Work; Art Is Work.
Art
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The Greatest Religious Problem Today Is How To Be Both A Mystic And A Militant; In Other Words How To Combine The Search For An Expansion Of Inner Awareness With Effective Social Action, And How To Feel One's True Identity In Both.
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A Person Who Believes, As She Did, That Things Fit: That There Is A Whole Of Which One Is A Part, And That In Being A Part One Is Whole: Such A Person Has No Desire Whatever, At Any Time, To Play God. Only Those Who Have Denied Their Being Yearn To Play At It.
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Play
Desire
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.
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Order
Littles
In The Tale, In The Telling, We Are All One Blood.
Blood
Tales
Predictions Are Uttered By Prophets (free Of Charge); By Clairvoyants (who Usually Charge A Fee, And Are Therefore More Honored In Their Day Than Prophets); And By Futurologists (salaried). Prediction Is The Business Of Prophets, Clairvoyants, And Futurologists. It Is Not The Business Of Novelists. A Novelist's Business Is Lying.
Lying
Novelists
Prophet
To Break A Promise Is To Deny The Reality Of The Past. Therefore It Is To Deny The Hope Of A Real Future.
Positive
Real
Past
You Will Die. You Will Not Live Forever. Nor Will Any Man Nor Any Thing. Nothing Is Immortal. But Only To Us Is It Given To Know That We Must Die. And That Is A Great Gift: The Gift Of Selfhood. For We Have Only What We Know We Must Lose, What We Are Willing To Lose... That Selfhood Which Is Our Torment, And Our Treasure, And Our Humanity, Does Not Endure. It Changes; It Is Gone, A Wave On The Sea. Would You Have The Sea Grow Still And The Tides Cease, To Save One Wave, To Save Yourself?
Men
Sea
Forever
Great Artists Make The Roads; Good Teachers And Good Companions Can Point Them Out. But There Ain't No Free Rides, Baby.
Baby
Teacher
Artist
What She Needs, At Least One Thing She Needs, Is Companionship. After All Why Should She Eat? Who Needs Her To Be Alive? What We Call Psychosis Is Sometimes Simply Realism. But Human Beings Can't Live On Realism Alone.
Psychosis
Needs
Alive
There Is No Kingdom Like The Forests.
Kingdoms
Forests
It Did Not Matter, After All. He Was Only One Man. One Man's Fate Is Not Important. "if It Is Not, What Is?" He Could Not Endure Those Remembered Words.
Fate
Men
Important
Truth Is A Matter Of The Imagination.
Imagination
Matter
Truth Is
We Decided That It Was No Good Asking What Is The Meaning Of Life, Because Life Isn't An Answer, Life Is The Question, And You, Yourself, Are The Answer.
Healing
Meaning Of Life
Asking
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!
Gratitude
Grateful
Dark
Belief In The Lie Is The Life Of The Lie.
Lying
Belief
In Innocence There Is No Strength Against Evil, Said Sparrowhawk, A Little Wryly. But There Is Strength In It For Good.
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Littles
Innocence
The Worst Walls Are Never The Ones You Find In Your Way. The Worst Walls Are The Ones You Put There .
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Acceptance
Way
As A Writer You Are Free. You Are About The Freest Person That Ever Was. Your Freedom Is What You Have Bought With Your Solitude, Your Loneliness. You Are In The Country Where You Make Up The Rules, The Laws. You Are Both Dictator And Obedient Populace. It Is A Country Nobody Has Ever Explored Before. It Is Up To You To Make The Maps, To Build The Cities. Nobody Else In The World Can Do It, Or Ever Could Do It, Or Ever Will Be Able To Do It Again.
Country
Loneliness
Law
What You Love, You Will Love. What You Undertake You Will Complete. You Are A Fulfiller Of Hope; You Are To Be Relied On. But Seventeen Years Give Little Armor Against Despair...consider, Arren. To Refuse Death Is To Refuse Life.
Life
Love You
Years
It's The Self That Suffers, And There's A Place Where The Self--ceases. I Don't Know How To Say It. But I Believe That The Reality--the Truth That I Recognize In Suffering As I Don't In Comfort And Happiness--that The Reality Of Pain Is Not Pain. If You Can Get Through It. If You Can Endure It All The Way.
Pain
Believe
Reality
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.
Noble
Way
Righteous
Certainly The Effort To Remain Unchanged, Young, When The Body Gives So Impressive A Signal Of Change As The Menopause, Is Gallant; But It Is A Stupid, Self-sacrificial Gallantry, Better Befitting A Boy Of Twenty Than A Woman Of Forty-five Or Fifty. Let The Athletes Die Young And Laurel-crowned. Let The Soldiers Earn The Purple Hearts. Let Women Die Old, White-crowned, With Human Hearts.
Stupid
Athlete
Heart
Suffering Is Dysfunctional, Except As A Bodily Warning Against Danger. Psychologically And Socially It's Merely Destructive.
Suffering
Warning
Danger
Where There's Property, There's Theft.
Stealing
Theft
Property
When I Was Young, I Had To Choose Between The Life Of Being And The Life Of Doing. And I Leapt At The Latter Like A Trout To A Fly. But Each Deed You Do, Each Act, Binds You To Itself And To Its Consequences, And Makes You Act Again And Yet Again. Then Very Seldom Do You Come Upon A Space, A Time Like This, Between Act And Act, When You May Stop And Simply Be. Or Wonder Who, After All, You Are.
Space
Trout
Deeds
In War Everybody Is A Prisoner.
War
Prisoner
The Literature Of The Emperor Penguin Is As Forbidding, As Inaccessible, As The Frozen Heart Of Antarctica Itself. Its Beauties May Be Unearthly, But They Are Not For Us.
Heart
Animal
Frozen
The Earth Is Beautiful, And Bright, And Kindly, But That Is Not All. The Earth Is Also Terrible, And Dark, And Cruel.
Beautiful
Dark
Earth
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.
Women
Responsibility
Rights
You Must Not Change One Thing, One Pebble, One Grain Of Sand, Until You Know What Good And Evil Will Follow On That Act.
Change
Evil
Decision
Dead Anarchists Make Martyrs, You Know, And Keep Living For Centuries. But Absent Ones Can Be Forgotten.
Anarchist
Forgotten
Century
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.
Beautiful
Eye
Dark
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.
Law
Choices
Betrayed
Manipulated, One Manipulates Others.
Manipulate
If Civilization Has An Opposite, It Is War.
War
Opposites
Civilization
To Be Whole Is To Be Part; True Voyage Is Return.
Voyages
Return
Whole
The Place They Go Towards Is A Place Even Less Imaginable To Us Than The City Of Happiness. I Cannot Describe It At All. It Is Possible It Does Not Exist. But They Seem To Know Where They Are Going, The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.
Cities
Doe
Walks
No, I Don't Mean Love, When I Say Patriotism. I Mean Fear. The Fear Of The Other. And Its Expressions Are Political, Not Poetical: Hate, Rivalry, Aggression.
Hate
Mean
Expression
If You Evade Suffering You Also Evade The Chance Of Joy. Pleasure You May Get, Or Pleasures, But You Will Not Be Fulfilled. You Will Not Know What It Is To Come Home.
Home
Joy
Suffering
All Times Are Changing Times, But Ours Is One Of Massive, Rapid Moral And Mental Transformation. Archetypes Turn Into Millstones, Large Simplicities Get Complicated, Chaos Becomes Elegant, And What Everybody Knows Is True Turns Out To Be What Some People Used To Think.
Thinking
Times Are Changing
People
Owning Is Owing, Having Is Hoarding.
Hoarding
Owing
When Action Grows Unprofitable, Gather Information; When Information Grows Unprofitable, Sleep.
Funny
Humor
Sleep
What Is A Woman's Power Then?" She Asked. "i Don't Think We Know." "when Has A Woman Power Because She's A Woman? With Her Children, I Suppose. For A While..." "in Her House, Maybe." She Looked Around The Kitchen. "but The Doors Are Shut," She Said, "the Doors Are Locked." "because You're Valuable." "oh Yes. We're Precious. So Long As We're Powerless.
Children
Thinking
Doors
There Are No Right Answers To Wrong Questions.
Peace
Asking Questions
Questions And Answers
You Can’t Crush Ideas By Suppressing Them. You Can Only Crush Them By Ignoring Them. By Refusing To Think, Refusing To Change.
Crush
Thinking
Ideas
Without War There Are No Heroes. What Harm Would That Be? Oh, Lavinia, What A Woman's Question That Is.
War
Hero
Lavinia
They Can Send Death At Once, But Life Is Slower.
Life Is
Great Artists Make The Roads; Good Teachers And Good Companions Can Point Them Out. But There Ain't No Free Rides, Baby. No Hitchhiking. And If You Want To Strike Out In Any New Direction — You Go Alone. With A Machete In Your Hand And The Fear Of God In Your Heart.
Baby
Teacher
Heart
Writers Are Egotists. All Artists Are. They Can’t Be Altruists And Get Their Work Done. And Writers Love To Whine About The Solitude Of The Author’s Life, And Lock Themselves Into Cork-lined Rooms Or Droop Around In Bars In Order To Whine Better. But Although Most Writing Is Done In Solitude, I Believe That It Is Done, Like All The Arts, For An Audience. That Is To Say, With An Audience. All The Arts Are Performance Arts, Only Some Of Them Are Sneakier About It Than Others.
Art
Believe
Writing
Success Is Somebody Else's Failure.
I Am No More Lonely Than The Loon On The Pond That Laughs So Loud.
Lonely
Laughing
Ponds
From That Time Forth He Believed That The Wise Man Is One Who Never Sets Himself Apart From Other Living Things, Whether They Have Speech Or Not, And In Later Years He Strove Long To Learn What Can Be Learned, In Silence, From The Eyes Of Animals, The Flight Of Birds, The Great Slow Gestures Of Trees.
Wise
Eye
Animal
The Island Of Gont, A Single Mountain That Lifts Its Peak A Mile Above The Storm-racked Northeast Sea, Is A Land Famous For Wizards.
Islands
Sea
Storm
You Have To Help Another Person. But It's Not Right To Play God With Masses Of People. To Be God You Have To Know What You're Doing. And To Do Any Good At All, Just Believing You're Right And Your Motives Are Good Isn't Enough.
Believe
Play
People
If You Want To Know All About The Sea ... And Ask The Sea Itself, What Does It Say? Grumble Grumble Swish Swish. It Is Too Busy Being Itself To Know Anything About Itself.
Sea
Doe
Want
A Dangerous Book Will Always Be In Danger From Those It Threatens With The Demand That They Question Their Assumptions. They'd Rather Hang On To The Assumptions And Ban The Book.
Book
Demand
Assumption
Very Seldom Do You Come Upon A Space, A Time Like This, Between Act And Act, When You May Stop And Simply Be.
Space
May
It Is Useless Work That Darkens The Heart.
Work
Heart
Useless
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.
Rejects You
Enemy
Facts
The Search For Pleasure Is Circular, Repetitive, Atemporal. The Variety Seeking Of The Spectator, The Thrill Hunter, The Sexually Promiscuous, Always Ends In The Same Place. It Has An End. It Comes To The End And Has To Start Over. It Is Not A Journey And Return, But A Closed Cycle, A Locked Room, A Cell.
Journey
Cells
Starting Over
What Is Love Of One's Country; Is It Hate Of One's Uncountry? Then It's Not A Good Thing. Is It Simply Self-love? That's A Good Thing, But One Musn't Make A Virtue Of It, Or A Profession...insofar As I Love Life, I Love [my Country], But That Sort Of Love Does Not Have A Boundary-line Of Hate. And Beyond That, I Am Ignorant, I Hope.
Country
Hate
Love Life
If Women Had Power, What Would Men Be But Women Who Can't Bear Children? And What Would Women Be But Men Who Can?" "hah!" Went Tenar; And Presently, With Some Cunning, She Said, "haven't There Been Queens? Weren't They Women Of Power?" "a Queen's Only A She-king," Said Ged. She Snorted. "i Mean, Men Give Her Power. They Let Her Use Their Power. But It Isn't Hers, Is It? It Isn't Because She's A Woman That She's Powerful, But Despite It.
Kings
Queens
Children
No Matter How Successful, Beloved, Influential Her Work Was, When A Woman Author Dies, Nine Times Out Of Ten, She Gets Dropped From The Lists, The Courses, The Anthologies, While The Men Get Kept. ... If She Had The Nerve To Have Children, Her Chances Of Getting Dropped Are Higher Still. ... So 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.
Suicide
Children
Taken
But Need Alone Is Not Enough To Set Power Free: There Must Be Knowledge.
Needs
Enough
We're Each Of Us Alone, To Be Sure. What Can You Do But Hold Your Hand Out In The Dark?
Dark
Hands
When In The Land Of Property Think Like A Propertarian. Dress Like One, Eat Like One, Act Like One, Be One.
Thinking
Land
Dresses
In The Tale, In The Telling, We Are All One Blood. Take The Tale In Your Teeth, Then, And Bite Till The Blood Runs, Hoping It's Not Poison; And We Will All Come To The End Together, And Even To The Beginning: Living, As We Do, In The Middle.
Running
Writing
Blood
Fake Realism Is The Escapist Literature Of Our Time. And Probably The Ultimate Escapist Reading Is That Masterpiece Of Total Unreality, The Daily Stock Market Report.
Reading
Fake
Literature
For Fantasy Is True, Of Course. It Isn't Factual, But It Is True. Children Know That. Adults Know It Too, And That Is Precisely Why Many Of Them Are Afraid Of Fantasy. They Know That Its Truth Challenges, Even Threatens, All That Is False, All That Is Phony, Unnecessary, And Trivial In The Life They Have Let Themselves Be Forced Into Living. They Are Afraid Of Dragons, Because They Are Afraid Of Freedom.
Children
Dragons
Challenges
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.
Happiness
Pain
Stupid
He Is Far Too Intelligent To Become Really Cerebral.
Intelligent
Cerebral
I've Got Some Gift For Languages. You Follow Your Gift. But Latin's Not Easy.
Latin
Language
Easy
Fantasy Is A Literature Particularly Useful For Embodying And Examining The Real Difference Between Good And Evil. In An America Where Our Reality May Seem Degraded To Posturing Patriotism And Self-righteous Brutality, Imaginative Literature Continues To Question What Heroism Is, To Examine The Roots Of Power, And To Offer Moral Alternatives. Imagination Is The Instrument Of Ethics. There Are Many Metaphors Besides Battle, Many Choices Besides War, And Most Ways Of Doing Good Do Not, In Fact, Involve Killing Anybody. Fanstasy Is Good At Thinking About Those Other Ways.
Real
War
Thinking
Virginity Is Now A Mere Preamble Or Waiting Room To Be Got Out Of As Soon As Possible; It Is Without Significance.
Sex
Waiting Rooms
Preamble
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.
Children
Real
Two
You Must Come To Terms With Your Wholeself. The Wholeness Which Exceeds All Our Virtue And All Our Vice.
Vices
Virtue
Term
When People Say, Did You Always Want To Be A Writer?, I Have To Say No! I Always Was A Writer.
People
Want
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!
Hate
Fighting
Winning
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?
Single Life
Sun
Life Is
Abstractions About Right And Wrong, Whether They Are As Old As Thou Shalt Not Kill Or As Modern As Do Your Own Thing, Often Serve Only To Confuse And Weaken Genuine Moral Decision.
Decision
Morality
Modern
This Is The Treason Of The Artist: A Refusal To Admit The Banality Of Evil And The Terrible Boredom Of Pain.
Pain
Artist
Evil
To Hear, One Must Be Silent.
Silent
To Oppose Something Is To Maintain It.
Law Of Attraction
To Exhibit The Perfect Uselessness Of Knowing The Answer To The Wrong Question.
Knowing
Perfect
Left Hand
Genre Is A Useful Concept Only When Used Not Evaluatively But Descriptively.
Genre Is
Used
Genre
A Moral Choice In Its Basic Terms Appears To Be A Choice That Favors Survival: A Choice Made In Favor Of Life.
Choices Made
Survival
Favors
Light Is The Left Hand Of Darkness And Darkness The Right Hand Of Light. Two Are One, Life And Death, Lying Together Like Lovers In Kemmer, Like Hands Joined Together, Like The End And The Way.
Lying
Light
Hands
Almost Anything Carried To A Logical Extreme Becomes Depressing.
Depressing
Logical
Extremes
A Writer Either Speaks To Adults And Bores Kids, Or Speaks To Kids And Upsets Adults.
Writing
Kids
Upset
Science Fiction Is Not Prescriptive; It Is Descriptive.
Fiction
Science Fiction
In Our Loss And Fear We Craved The Acts Of Religion, The Ceremonies That Allow Us To Admit Our Helplessness, Our Dependence On The Great Forces We Do Not Understand.
Fear
Loss
Force
The Light Is The Left Hand Of Darkness.
Light
Hands
Darkness
What Sane Person Could Live In This World And Not Be Crazy?
Funny
Depression
Crazy
...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.
Voice
Stories
Facts
The Pornography Of Violence Of Course Far Exceeds, In Volume And General Acceptance, Sexual Pornography, In This Puritan Land Of Ours. Exploiting The Apocalypse, Selling The Holocaust, Is A Pornography. For The Ultimate Selling Job On Ultimate Violence One Must Read Those Works Of Fiction Issued By Our Government As Manuals Of Civil Defense, In Which You Learn That There's Nothing To Be Afraid Of If You've Stockpiled Lots Of Dried Fruit.
Jobs
Business
Acceptance
The Unread Story Is Not A Story; It Is Little Black Marks On Wood Pulp. The Reader, Reading It, Makes It Live: A Live Thing, A Story.
Book
Reading
Writing
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.
Women
Moon
Islands
If Science Fiction Is The Mythology Of Modern Technology, Then Its Myth Is Tragic.
Writing
Technology
Fiction
To Read And To Write. Some Writers Have To Be Told To Write. They Think Their Job Is To Meet Agents And Have Experiences And They Can Just Be Rich And Famous. Their Job Is To Write. Some Really Don't Realize That. And You Can't Write Unless You Read.
Jobs
Writing
Thinking
The Label Ya Actually Means Nothing Except That The Protagonists, Or Some Of Them, Are Young. Publishers Like It Because It Is A Secure Marketing Niche. But The Cost Of Security Is Exclusion From Literary Consideration.
Mean
Marketing
Exclusion
I Write With All My Heart
Writing
Heart
My Heart
I Certainly Wasn't Happy. Happiness Has To Do With Reason, And Only Reason Earns It. What I Was Given Was The Thing You Can't Earn, And Can't Keep, And Often Don't Even Recognize At The Time; I Mean Joy.
Happiness
Time
Mean
To Me The Female Principle Is, Or At Least Historically Has Been, Basically Anarchic. It Values Order Without Constraint, Rule By Custom Not By Force. It Has Been The Male Who Enforces Order, Who Constructs Power Structures, Who Makes, Enforces, And Breaks Laws.
Women
Order
Law
Statesmen Remember Things Selectively.
Remember
Statesmen
Sometimes You Must Go Against The Wheel's Turn.
Wheels
Sometimes
Turns
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.
Writing
Character
People
We Scarcely Know How Much Of Our Pleasure And Interest In Life Comes To Us Through Our Eyes Until We Have To Do Without Them; And Part Of That Pleasure Is That The Eyes Can Choose Where To Look. But The Ears Can't Choose Where To Listen.
Eye
Looks
Ears
I Think Hard Times Are Coming. We Will Need Writers Who Can Remember Freedom. Poets, Visionaries, The Realists Of A Larger Reality.
Hard Times
Reality
Thinking
Every Book Purchase Made From Amazon Is A Vote For A Culture Without Content And Without Contentment.
Book
Contentment
Amazon
If You Deny Any Affinity With Another Person Or Kind Of Person, If You Declare It To Be Wholly Different From Yourself
Equality
Different
Kind
Other People's Stories May Become Part Of Your Own, The Foundation Of It, The Ground It Goes On.
People
Foundation
Stories
The Law Of Evolution Is That The Strongest Survives.
Law
Evolution
Strongest
Fantasy Is Probably The Oldest Literary Device For Talking About Reality.
Reality
Talking
Fantasy
Fire And Fear, Good Servants, Bad Lords.
Fear
Fire
Lord
The Question Is Always The Same With A Dragon: Will He Talk With You Or Will He Eat You?
Dragons
Fantasy
Myth
There Are Things That Outweigh Comfort, Unless One Is An Old Woman Or A Cat.
Cat
Comfort
Old Woman
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.
Peace
Hurt
Law
The Misogyny That Shapes Every Aspect Of Our Civilization Is The Institutionalized Form Of Male Fear And Hatred Of What They Have Denied And Therefore Cannot Know, Cannot Share: That Wild Country, The Being Of Women.
Country
Women
Civilization
We Broke The World To Make It Whole.
World
Broke
Whole
The End Justifies The Means. But What If There Never Is An End? All We Have Is Means.
Mean
What If
Ends
Happiness Is Based On A Just Discrimination Of What Is Necessary, What Is Neither Necessary Nor Destructive, And What Is Destructive. In The Middle Category, However - That Of The Unnecessary But Undestructive, That Of Comfort, Luxury, Exuberance, Etc
Happiness
Luxury
Justice
Sure, It's Simple, Writing For Kids... Just As Simple As Bringing Them Up.
Writing
Kids
Simple
To Oppose Something Is To Maintain It... You Must Go Somewhere Else; You Must Have Another Goal; Then You Walk A Different Road.
Somewhere Else
Goal
Different
To Claim Power Over What You Do Not Understand Is Not Wise, Nor Is The End Of It Likely To Be Good.
Wise
Ends
Claims
Reading Is Performance. The Reader--the Child Under The Blanket With A Flashlight, The Woman At The Kitchen Table, The Man At The Library Desk--performs The Work. The Performance Is Silent. The Readers Hear The Sounds Of The Words And The Beat Of The Sentences Only In Their Inner Ear. Silent Drummers On Noiseless Drums. An Amazing Performance In An Amazing Theater.
Children
Reading
Men
I Know People, I Know Towns, Farms, Hills And Rivers And Rocks, I Know How The Sun At Sunset In Autumn Falls On The Side Of A Certain Plowland In The Hills; But What Is The Sense Of Giving A Boundary To All That, Of Giving A Name And Ceasing To Love Where The Name Ceases To Apply?
Fall
Sunset
Autumn
The Children Of The Revolution Are Always Ungrateful, And The Revolution Must Be Grateful That It Is So.
Children
Grateful
Revolution
It Is A Real Wilderness, And Those Who Go There Should Not Feel Too Safe.
Real
Safe
Wilderness
It's Probably Simply A Matter Of Temperament That I Never Stopped To Wonder If I Could "match" What I Had Done, Never Choked Off My Writing By Competing With Myself, Or With Anybody Else For That Matter. My Ambition Was Absolutely Centered On The Work Itself, Never On What It Would Bring Me, Or "who" It Would Make Me. I Never Cared About That At All.
Writing
Ambition
Done
And I Needed A Rock. Something To Hold Onto, To Stand On. Something Solid. Because Everything Was Going Soft, Turning Into Mush, Into Marsh, Into Fog. Fog Closing In On All Sides. I Didn't Know Where I Was At All.
Rocks
Fog
Sides
The Pornography Of Violence Of Course Far Exceeds, In Volume And General Acceptance, Sexual Pornography, In This Puritan Land Of Ours.
Acceptance
Land
Violence
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