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You Sit Down And You Do It, And You Do It, And You Do It, Until You Have Learned To Do It.
-Ursula K. Le Guin
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You Sit Down And

Ursula K. Le Guin
...
You Sit Down And You Do It, And You Do It, And You Do It, Until You Have Learned To Do It.

Understanding the Quote: "you sit down and you do it, and you do it, and..."

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, Down And, 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 down and. 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
Down And
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...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
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.
People
Trying
Way
All Makers Must Leave Room For Acts Of The Spirit.
Rooms
Spirit
Makers
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.
Kids
Writing
Mean
Why Can I Never Set My Heart On A Possible Thing?
Hope
Heart
Ambition
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.
Art
Writing
Skills
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
To Oppose Something Is To Maintain It.
Law Of Attraction
We Are Volcanoes. When We Women Offer Our Experience As Our Truth, As Human Truth, All The Maps Change. There Are New Mountains.
Peace
Volcanoes
Feminism
We Sleep Researchers Like Cats, You Know; They Sleep A Lot!
Sleep
Cat
Researchers
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.
Stars
Fall
Thinking
Success Is Somebody Else's Failure.
I Use A Whole Lot Of Half-assed Semicolons; There Was One Of Them Just Now; That Was A Semicolon After 'semicolons,' And Another One After 'now.
Use
Half
Whole
Science Fiction Is Not Predictive; It Is Descriptive.... Prediction Is The Business Of Prophets, Clairvoyants, And Futurologists. It Is Not The Business Of Novelists. A Novelist's Business Is Lying.... Open Your Eyes; Listen, Listen. That Is What The Novelists Say. But They Don't Tell You What You Will See And Hear. All They Can Tell You Is What They Have Seen And Heard, In Their Time In This World, A Third Of It Spent In Sleep And Dreaming, Another Third Of It Spent In Telling Lies.
Dream
Lying
Sleep
Much Arrogance Is Necessary Equipment For An Artist, I Think. Not Sufficient, But Necessary. It Carries One Across The Gaps.
Artist
Thinking
Arrogance
When People Say, Did You Always Want To Be A Writer?, I Have To Say No! I Always Was A Writer.
People
Want
A Forest Ecology Is A Delicate One. If The Forest Perishes, Its Fauna May Go With It. The Athshean Word For World Is Also The Word For Forest.
May
Forests
World
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
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.
Children
Growing Up
Believe
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.
Book
School
Thinking
I Think What's Happening Is, It's All - Fantasy, Science Fiction, Ghosts, Trolls, Whatever - Finally Being Called, Being Admitted To Be Literature. The Way It Used To Be, Before The Realists And The Bloody Modernists Took Over.
Thinking
Way
Fiction
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
We Read Books To Find Out Who We Are.
Book
Discovery
Self Understanding
Sanity Returns (in Most Cases) When The Book Is Closed.
Book
Return
Sanity
If We Can Get That Realistic Feminine Morality Working For Us, If We Can Trust Ourselves And So Let Women Think And Feel That An Unwanted Child Or An Oversize Family Is Wrong -- Not Ethically Wrong, Not Against The Rules, But Morally Wrong, All Wrong, Wrong Like A Thalidomide Birth, Wrong Like Taking A Wrong Step That Will Break Your Neck -- If We Can Get Feminine And Human Morality Out From Under The Yoke Of A Dead Ethic, Then Maybe We'll Begin To Get Somewhere On The Road That Leads To Survival.
Children
Thinking
Survival
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
Injustice Makes The Rules, And Courage Breaks Them.
Injustice
Break
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
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.
Teaching
Writing
Marketing
What's Wrong With Men?" Tenar Inquired Cautiously. As Cautiously, Lowering Her Voice, Moss Replied, "i Don't Know, My Dearie. I've Thought On It. Often I've Thought On It. The Best I Can Say It Is Like This. A Man's In His Skin, See, Like A Nut In Its Shell." She Held Up Her Long, Bent, Wet Fingers As If Holding A Walnut. "it's Hard And Strong, That Shell, And It's All Full Of Him. Full Of Grand Man-meat, Man-self. And That's All. That's All There Is. It's All Him And Nothing Else, Inside.
Strong
Men
Self
To Think That Realistic Fiction Is By Definition Superior To Imaginative Fiction Is To Think Imitation Is Superior To Invention.
Thinking
Fiction
Definitions
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
Statesmen Remember Things Selectively.
Remember
Statesmen
Have You Never Thought How Danger Must Surround Power As Shadow Does Light?
Light
Shadow
Doe
Do You Know How To Read?" "no. It Is One Of The Black Arts." He Nodded. "but A Useful One," He Said.
Art
Black
Said
A Writer Is A Person Who Cares What Words Mean, What They Say, How They Say It... By Using Words Well They Strengthen Their Souls.
Mean
Soul
Who Cares
One Man May As Easily Destroy, As Govern: Be King Or Anti-king.
Kings
Men
May
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.
Country
Running
Baby
Even The Best Weapon Is An Unhappy Tool, Hateful To Living Things. So The Follower Of The Way Stays Away From It. Weapons Are Unhappy Tools, Not Chosen By Thoughtful People, To Be Used Only When There Is No Choice, And With A Calm, Still Mind, Without Enjoyment. To Enjoy Using Weapons Is To Enjoy Killing People, And To Enjoy Killing People Is To Lose Your Share In The Common Good. It Is Right That The Murder Of Many People Be Mourned And Lamented. It Is Right That A Victor In War Be Received With Funeral Ceremonies.
War
Thoughtful
People
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
My Great-aunt. . . . Said Nobody Under 18 Had Any Business Reading Dickens. . . . She Was Right.
Reading
Aunt
Said
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.
Country
Lying
Eye
My Imagination Makes Me Human And Makes Me A Fool; It Gives Me All The World, And Exiles Me From It.
Inspirational
Stupid
Equality
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.
Future
Thinking
Sacred
If A Book Were Written All In Numbers, It Would Be True. It Would Be Just. Nothing Said In Words Ever Came Out Quite Even. Things In Words Got Twisted And Ran Together, Instead Of Staying Straight And Fitting Together. But Underneath The Words, At The Center, Like The Center Of The Square, It All Came Out Even. Everything Could Change, Yet Nothing Would Be Lost. If You Saw The Numbers You Could See That, The Balance, The Pattern. You Saw The Foundations Of The World. And They Were Solid.
Book
Numbers
Squares
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.
Believe
Play
Desire
Sometimes You Must Go Against The Wheel's Turn.
Wheels
Sometimes
Turns
Genre Is A Useful Concept Only When Used Not Evaluatively But Descriptively.
Genre Is
Used
Genre
I Have Decided That The Trouble With Print Is, It Never Changes Its Mind.
Book
Reading
Mind
She Had Always Known That All Lives Are In Common, Rejoicing In Her Kinship To The Fish In The Tanks Of Her Laboratories, Seeking The Experience Of Existences Outside The Human Boundary.
Animal
Tanks
Common
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
Honestly, Orthodoxy Concerns Me About As Much As It Concerns Your Average Jackrabbit. I Only Follow Rules That Take Me Where I Want To Go. If There Aren't Any Rules, I Make Up My Own And Follow Them Strictly.
Average
Want
Orthodoxy
The Danger In Trying To Do Good Is That The Mind Comes To Confuse The Intent Of Goodness With The Act Of Doing Things Well.
Mind
Trying
Goodness
Men Who Fight Wars In Winter Don't Live Till Spring.
Spring
War
Fighting
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.
Army
Men
Sky
Claude Levi-strauss Has Been A Great Source Of Fruitful Irritation To My Mind.
Irritation
Mind
Levi Strauss
Wrongs Done Could Not Be Righted, But At Least They Were Not Still Being Done.
Done
Stills
Being Done
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
Art
Writing
Mysterious
Suffering Is Dysfunctional, Except As A Bodily Warning Against Danger. Psychologically And Socially It's Merely Destructive.
Suffering
Warning
Danger
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
Freedom Is A Heavy Load, A Great And Strange Burden For The Spirit To Undertake. It Is Not Easy. It Is Not A Gift Given, But A Choice Made, And The Choice May Be A Hard One. The Road Goes Upward Towards The Light; But The Laden Traveler May Never Reach The End Of It.
Light
Choices Made
May
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.
Communication
Sleep
People
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
A Wrong That Cannot Be Repaired Must Be Transcended.
It Is Hard, I Found, To Be Called Traitor. Strange How Hard It Is, For It's An Easy Name To Call Another Man.
Betrayal
Men
Names
I Think," Tehanu Said In Her Soft, Strange Voice, "that When I Die, I Can Breathe Back The Breath That Made Me Live. I Can Give Back To The World All That I Didn't Do. All That I Might Have Been And Couldn't Be. All The Choices I Didn't Make. All The Things I Lost And Spent And Wasted. I Can Give Them Back To The World. To The Lives That Haven't Been Lived Yet. That Will Be My Gift Back To The World That Gave Me The Life I Did Live, The Love I Loved, The Breath I Breathed.
Loss
Thinking
Voice
I Think Hard Times Are Coming When We Will Be Wanting The Voices Of Writers Who Can See Alternatives To How We Live Now And Can See Through Our Fear-stricken Society And Its Obsessive Technologies To Other Ways Of Being, And Even Imagine Some Real Grounds For Hope. We Will Need Writers Who Can Remember Freedom. Poets, Visionaries-the Realists Of A Larger Reality.
Real
Thinking
Hard Times
Belief In The Lie Is The Life Of The Lie.
Lying
Belief
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.
Art
Real
Essentials
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.
Writing
Thinking
Self
Fire And Fear, Good Servants, Bad Lords.
Fear
Fire
Lord
Distrust Everything I Say. I Am Telling The Truth.
Telling The Truth
Distrust
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
Artists Are People Who Are Not At All Interested In The Facts - Only In The Truth.
Artist
People
Facts
A Scientist Can Pretend That His Work Isn't Himself, It's Merely The Impersonal Truth. An Artist Can't Hide Behind The Truth. He Can't Hide Anywhere.
Artist
Scientist
Behinds
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
What Is More Arrogant Than Honesty?
Honesty
Arrogant
What Is Life Without Incompatible Realities?
Reality
What Is Life
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 One Thing A Writer Has To Have Is A Pencil And Some Paper. That's Enough, So Long As She Knows That She And She Alone Is In Charge Of That Pencil, And Responsible, She And She Alone, For What It Writes On That Paper.
Writing
Long
Paper
Odonianism Is Anarchism. Not The Bomb-in-the-pocket Stuff, Which Is Terrorism, Whatever Name It Tries To Dignify Itself With, Not The Social-darwinist Economic 'libertarianism' Of The Far Right; But Anarchism, As Prefigured In Early Taoist Thought, And Expounded By Shelley And Kropotkin, Goldman And Goodman. Anarchism's Principal Target Is The Authoritarian State (capitalist Or Socialist); Its Principle Moral-practical Theme Is Cooperation (solidarity, Mutual Aid). It Is The Most Idealistic, And To Me The Most Interesting, Of All Political Theories.
Names
Interesting
Political
Would You Really Like To Live In A Society Where You Have No Responsibility And No Freedom, No Choice, Only The False Option Of Obedience To The Law, Or Disobedience Followed By Punishment? Would You Really Want To Go Live In A Prison?
Responsibility
Law
Punishment
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
Despair Speaks Evenly, In A Quiet Voice.
Quiet Voice
Despair
Speak
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
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
See, The Thing Is, 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.
Loneliness
Solitude
Persons
Compare The Torrent And The Glacier. Both Get Where They Are Going.
Glaciers
Compare
Almost Anything Carried To A Logical Extreme Becomes Depressing.
Depressing
Logical
Extremes
What You Select From, In Order To Tell Your Story, Is Nothing Less Than Everything. What You Build Up Your World From, Your Local, Intelligible Rational, Coherent World, Is Nothing Less Than Everything. . . . . All Human Knowledge Is Local. Every Life, Each Human Life Is Local, Is Arbitrary, The Infinitesimal Momentary Glitter Of A Reflection.
Humility
Reflection
Order
To Hear, One Must Be Silent.
Silent
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.
Art
Writing
Mean
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?
Stars
Flower
Light
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.
School
College
Paper
Where There's Property, There's Theft.
Stealing
Theft
Property
It's A Rare Gift, To Know Where You Need To Be, Before You've Been To All The Places You Don't Need To Be.
Needs
Knows
The More Defensive A Society, The More Conformist.
Conformist
You Must Come To Terms With Your Wholeself. The Wholeness Which Exceeds All Our Virtue And All Our Vice.
Vices
Virtue
Term
When I'm Writing I Don't Dream Much; It's Like The Dreaming Gets Used In The Writing.
Dream
Writing
Used
Scientific Truth Will Out, You Can't Hide The Sun Under A Stone.
Science
Stones
Sun
In Reading A Novel, Any Novel, We Have To Know Perfectly Well That The Whole Thing Is Nonsense, And Then, While Reading, Believe Every Word Of It. Finally, 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 Changed A Little... But It's Very Hard To Say Just What We Learned, How We Were Changed.
Believe
Reading
Different
I Don’t Think ‘science Fiction’ Is A Very Good Name For It, But It’s The Name That We’ve Got. It Is Different From Other Kinds Of Writing, I Suppose, So It Deserves A Name Of Its Own. But Where I Can Get Prickly And Combative Is, If I’m Just Called A Sci-fi Writer. I’m Not. I’m A Novelist And Poet. Don’t Shove Me Into Your Damn Pigeonhole, Where I Don’t Fit, Because I’m All Over. My Tentacles Are Coming Out Of The Pigeonhole In All Directions.
Writing
Thinking
Names
So The First Step Out Of Childhood Is Made All At Once, Without Looking Before Or Behind, Without Caution, And Nothing Held In Reserve.
Childhood
Firsts
Steps
Elegance Is A Small Price To Pay For Enlightenment, And I Was Glad To Pay It.
Enlightenment
Pay
Elegance
The Bond Between True Lovers Is As Close As We Come To What Endures Forever.
Life
Forever
Lovers
There Are Things That Outweigh Comfort, Unless One Is An Old Woman Or A Cat.
Cat
Comfort
Old Woman
I Do Not Care What Comes After; I Have Seen The Dragons On The Wind Of Morning.
Morning
Dragons
Wind
Oh, Never And Forever Aren't For Mortals, Love. But We Won't Be Parted Till I Know It's Right That We Part.
Saying Goodbye
Forever
Knows
A Panda Walks Into A Tea Room And Ordered A Salad And Ate It. Then It Pulled Out A Pistol, Shot The Man In The Next Table Dead, And Walked Out. Everyone Rushed After It, Shouting "stop! Stop! Why Did You Do That?" "becuase I Am A Panda," Said The Panda. "that's What Pandas Do. If You Don't Believe Me, Look In The Dictionary." So They Looked In The Dictionary And Sure Enough They Found Panda: Racoon-like Animal Of Asia. Eats Shoots And Leaves.
Believe
Men
Animal
Love Does Not Obey The Mind, And Turns To Hate When Forced.
Hate
Mind
Doe
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
All Knowledge Is Local, All Truth Is Partial. No Truth Can Make Another Truth Untrue. All Knowledge Is Part Of The Whole Knowledge. Once You Have Seen The Larger Pattern, You Cannot Go Back To Seeing The Part As The Whole.
Patterns
Truth Is
Whole
Art, Like Sex, Cannot Be Carried On Indefinitely Solo; After All, They Have The Same Enemy, Sterility.
Art
Sex
Enemy
I Gather That A Lot Of The "pots" In The Great Museum In Baghdad, Which We Allowed To Be Looted And Then Gutted, Are Now For Sale To The Highest Bidder On The Art And Archeology Black Market. This Is Good Capitalism, I Guess, While A Museum, Being A Public Trust And Accessible To All, Is Anticapitalist, Pretty Damn Near Socialist In Fact.
Art
Museums
Black
Yet We Were Rescued By That Fancy, And Saved By A Myth.
Fancy
Myth
Saved
When You Light A Candle, You Also Cast A Shadow.
Light
Darkness
Shadow
Darkness Is Only In The Mortal Eye, That Thinks It Sees, But Sees Not.
Eye
Thinking
Darkness
It Had Never Occurred To Me Before That Music And Thinking Are So Much Alike. In Fact You Could Say Music Is Another Way Of Thinking, Or Maybe Thinking Is Another Kind Of Music.
Writing
Thinking
Way
If One Believes That Words Are Acts, As I Do, Then One Must Hold Writers Responsible For What Their Words Do.
Believe
Responsible
Ifs
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
The Only Thing That Makes Life Possible Is Permanent, Intolerable Uncertainty; Not Knowing What Comes Next.
Life
Business
Future
You Are All In Jail. Each Alone, Solitary, With A Heap Of What He Owns. You Live In Prison, Die In Prison. It Is All I Can See In Your Eyes - The Wall, The Wall!
Wall
Eye
Jail
When You Work In Form, Be It A Sonnet Or Villanelle Or Whatever, The Form Is There And You Have To Fill It. And You Have To Find How To Make That Form Say What You Want To Say. But What You Find, Always--i Think Any Poet Who's Worked In Form Will Agree With Me--is That The Form Leads You To What You Want To Say.
Thinking
Want
Poet
If Civilization Has An Opposite, It Is War. Of These Two Things, You Have Either One, Or The Other. Not Both.
War
Opposites
Civilization
A Man Would Know The End He Goes To, But He Cannot Know It If He Does Not Turn, And Return To His Beginning, And Hold That Beginning In His Being. If He Would Not Be A Stick Whirled And Whelmed In The Stream, He Must Be The Stream Itself, All Of It, From Its Spring To Its Sinking In The Sea.
Spring
Men
Sea
Manipulated, One Manipulates Others.
Manipulate
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.
Art
Real
Mean
I've Got Some Gift For Languages. You Follow Your Gift. But Latin's Not Easy.
Latin
Language
Easy
The Only Questions That Really Matter Are The Ones You Ask Yourself.
Being Yourself
Matter
Asking Yourself Questions
Nobody Who Says, ‘i Told You So’ Has Ever Been, Or Will Ever Be, A Hero.
Freedom
Hero
Adventure
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
Fantasy Is Probably The Oldest Literary Device For Talking About Reality.
Reality
Talking
Fantasy
The Fish In The Creek Said Nothing. Fish Never Do. Few People Know What Fish Think About Injustice, Or Anything Else.
Thinking
People
Injustice
A Machine Is More Blameless, More Sinless Even Than Any Animal. It Has No Intentions Whatsoever But Our Own.
Animal
Machines
Intention
What Is A Body That Casts No Shadow? Nothing, A Formlessness, Two-dimensional, A Comic-strip Character. If I Deny My Own Profound Relationship With Evil I Deny My Own Reality. I Cannot Do, Or Make; I Can Only Undo, Unmake.
Character
Reality
Two
I Hope You Are Never Victims, But I Hope You Have No Power Over Other People.
People
Victim
Power Over Others
There's No Way To Use Power For Good.
Use
Way
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.
Summer
Spring
Heart
Living, Being In The World, Was A Much Greater And Stranger Thing Than She Had Ever Dreamed.
World
Stranger
Greater
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.
Thinking
Stories
Ends
We're Each Of Us Alone, To Be Sure. What Can You Do But Hold Your Hand Out In The Dark?
Dark
Hands
Go To Bed; Tired Is Stupid.
Stupid
Tired
Bed
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
It Is Very Hard For Evil To Take Hold Of The Unconsenting Soul.
Evil
Soul
Ged
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.
Light
Wind
Shadow
Fiction Writers, At Least In Their Braver Moments, Do Desire The Truth: To Know It, Speak It, Serve It. But They Go About It In A Peculiar And Devious Way, Which Consists In Inventing Persons, Places, And Events Which Never Did And Never Will Exist Or Occur, And Telling About These Fictions In Detail And At Length And With A Great Deal Of Emotion, And Then When They Are Done Writing Down This Pack Of Lies, They Say, There! That's The Truth!
Truth
Lying
Writing
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.
Jobs
Spring
Writing
But Need Alone Is Not Enough To Set Power Free: There Must Be Knowledge.
Needs
Enough
The Pornography Of Violence Of Course Far Exceeds, In Volume And General Acceptance, Sexual Pornography, In This Puritan Land Of Ours.
Acceptance
Land
Violence
There Is A Limited Number Of Plots. There Is No Limit To The Number Of Stories.
Numbers
Limits
Plot
It Is Of The Nature Of Idea To Be Communicated: Written, Spoken, Done. The Idea Is Like Grass. It Craves Light, Likes Crowds, Thrives On Crossbreeding, Grows Better For Being Stepped On.
Light
Ideas
Done
The King Was Pregnant.
Kings
Pregnant Women
Were Pregnant
The Explorer Who Will Not Come Back Or Send Back His Ships To Tell His Tale Is Not An Explorer, Only An Adventurer; And His Sons Are Born In Exile.
Travel
Son
Ships
There Is No Kingdom Like The Forests.
Kingdoms
Forests
The Hunger Of A Dragon Is Slow To Wake, But Hard To Sate.
Dragons
Hunger
Hard
There Are Souls, He Thought, Whose Umbilicus Has Never Been Cut. They Never Got Weaned From The Universe. They Do Not Understand Death As An Enemy; They Look Forward To Rotting And Turning Into Humus.
Cutting
Soul
Enemy
There Are No Right Answers To Wrong Questions.
Peace
Asking Questions
Questions And Answers
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.
Children
Growing Up
Believe
Art Is Action. The Way I Live My Life To Its Highest Degree Is By Writing, The Practice Of Art.
Art
Writing
Practice
Besides, When You Say You're A Feminist It Annoys The Bigots And The Old Farts And The Prissy Ladies So Much, It's Kind Of Irresistible.
Feminist
Kind
Annoying
George, It's Impossible To Correct A Defective Reality-orientation Overnight.
Reality
Impossible
Defective
What Children Don't Understand, And Can't Understand Until They Grow Up Some, Is How Much The Whole Fabric And Process Of Human Society Depends On Everybody Agreeing To Ignore, Most Of The Time, The Fact That All Of Us Are, Most Of The Time, Inadequate, Incompetent, Pitiful, And, In Fact, Naked To Our Enemies. None Of Us Really Has Very Much In The Way Of Spiritual, Moral Clothing. We Dress Ourselves In Rags. And We Agree To Say Nothing About It. To A Very Large Extent, It Is Human Charity That Clothes Us.
Spiritual
Children
Growing Up
It Is A Real Wilderness, And Those Who Go There Should Not Feel Too Safe.
Real
Safe
Wilderness
Nothing Is Yours. It Is To Use. It Is To Share. If You Will Not Share It, You Cannot Use It.
Use
Share
Ifs
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
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
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
... The Habit Of Literature [is] The Best Defense Against Believing The Half-truths Of Ideologues And The Lies Of Demagogues.
Lying
Believe
Defense
Can True Function Arise From Basic Dysfunction?
Dysfunction
Arise
Function
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.
Earth Day
World
Ruins
There Was One Person Who Greatly And Directly Benefited My Career--my Agent Virginia Kidd. From 1968 To The Late Nineties She Represented All My Work, In Every Field Except Poetry. I Could Send Her An Utterly Indescribable Story, And She'd Sell It To Playboy Or The Harvard Law Review Or Weird Tales Or The New Yorker--she Knew Where To Take It. She Never Told Me What To Write Or Not Write, She Never Told Me, That Won't Sell, And She Never Meddled With My Prose.
Writing
Careers
Virginia
After A Long Time Spent Learning How To Write As A Woman Instead Of As An Honorary Man, I Was Able To Come Back To Earthsea And Write The Next Three Books In Another And Newer Tradition: That Of Questioning, Rather Than Accepting, The Gendering Of Power As Male.
Book
Writing
Men
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
It Is Good To Have An End To Journey Towards; But It Is The Journey That Matters, In The End.
Inspirational
Motivational
Graduation
What Else Can The Young Be? When You Are On The Bottom, You Must Organize From The Bottom Up
Young
Organize
Bottom
Her Work, I Really Think Her Work Is Finding What Her Real Work Is And Doing It, Her Work, Her Own Work, Her Being Human, Her Being In The World.
Real
Healing
Thinking
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
The Light Is The Left Hand Of Darkness.
Light
Hands
Darkness
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.
Believe
Writing
Ideas
First Sentences Are Doors To Worlds.
Doors
World
Firsts
To Know There Is A Choice Is To Have To Make The Choice: Change Or Stay: River Or Rock.
Rocks
Rivers
Choices
Sometimes I Not Only Stand There And Take It, I Even Smile At Them And Say I'm Sorry. When I Feel That Smile Coming Onto My Face, I Wish I Could Take My Face Off And Stamp On It.
Sorry
Wish
Faces
When Action Grows Unprofitable, Gather Information; When Information Grows Unprofitable, Sleep.
Funny
Humor
Sleep
One Of The Things [fiction] Does Is Lead You To Recognize What You Did Not Know Before.
Doe
Fiction
Knows
Those Who Build Walls Are Their Own Prisoners.
Wall
Prisoner
Disapproval
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
You Can Go Home Again...so Long As You Understand That Home Is A Place Where You Have Never Been.
Home
Long
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
We Need Writers Who Know The Difference Between The Production Of A Commodity And The Practice Of An Art.
Art
Practice
Differences
Great Self-destruction Follows Upon Unfounded Fear.
Self
Self Destruction
Destruction
If You Deny Any Affinity With Another Person Or Kind Of Person, If You Declare It To Be Wholly Different From Yourself - As Men Have Done To Women, And Class Has Done To Class, And Nation Has Done To Nation - You May Hate It Or Deify It; But In Either Case You Have Denied Its Spiritual Equality And Its Human Reality. You Have Made It Into A Thing, To Which The Only Possible Relationship Is A Power Relationship. And Thus You Have Fatally Impoverished Your Own Reality.
Spiritual
Respect
Hate
Children Know Perfectly Well That Unicorns Aren’t Real, But They Also Know That Books About Unicorns, If They Are Good Books, Are True Books.
Children
Real
Book
The Question Is Always The Same With A Dragon: Will He Talk With You Or Will He Eat You?
Dragons
Fantasy
Myth
If Science Fiction Is The Mythology Of Modern Technology, Then Its Myth Is Tragic.
Writing
Technology
Fiction
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.
Meaningful
Cancer
Waiting Rooms
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.
Running
Time
Circles
At This Point, Realism Is Perhaps The Least Adequate Means Of Understanding Or Portraying The Incredible Realities Of Our Existence.
Mean
Reality
Understanding
There Are Very Real Differences Between Science Fiction And Realistic Fiction, Between Horror And Fantasy, Between Romance And Mystery. Differences In Writing Them, In Reading Them, In Criticizing Them. Vive Les Différences! They're What Gives Each Genre Its Singular Flavor And Savor, Its Particular Interest For The Reader - And The Writer.
Real
Reading
Writing
Music Is Another Way Of Thinking, Or Maybe Thinking Is Another Kind Of Music.
Music
Thinking
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
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