Ursula K. Le Guin Trying Quotations

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.

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.

We will not know our own injustice if we cannot imagine justice. We will not be free if we do not imagine freedom. We cannot demand that anyone try to attain justice and freedom who has not had a chance to imagine them as attainable.

What is the use trying to describe the flowing of a river at any one moment, and then at the next moment, and then at the next, and the next, and the next? You wear out. You say: There is a great river, and it flows through this land, and we have named it History.

That I was not dueling with the king, but trying to communicate with him, was itself an incommunicable fact.

I do try to separate my personal activism - showing up at a demonstration or something - from what I write.