Ursula K. Le Guin Life Quotations

Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.

The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.

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.

All or nothing at all, the true lover says, and that's the truth of it. My love will never die, he says. He claims eternity. And rightly. How can it die when it's life itself? What do we know of eternity but the glimpse we get of it when we enter in that bond?

If it were proven that there is no God there would be no religion. ...But also if it were proven that there is a God, there would be no religion.

I am living in a nightmare, from which from time to time I wake in sleep.

A profound love between two people involves, after all, the power and chance of doing profound hurt.

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.

The bond between true lovers is as close as we come to what endures forever.

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.