Ursula K. Le GuinThinkers

The Book is nothing but black marks on wood pulp when it is unread. The reader, reading it, makes it a live thing.

Civilization is simply a way to hide the blood and cover up the hate with pretty words.

Destiny is not something a man makes: he accepts it or denies it.

Genre is a word only a Frenchman could love.

Happiness is concerned with reason, and only reason earns it. Joy is, in contrast, incapable of being earned, kept, or often even recognized at the time.

Happiness is a thing having to do with reason, and only reason earns it.

Joy is incapable of being earned, kept, and often even recognized at the time. Happiness, in contrast, is concerned with reason, and only reason earns it.

Joy is distinguished from happiness in that happiness is concerned with reason, and only reason earns it. Joy, however, can't be earned, or kept, and often cannot even be recognized at the time.

Maturity is not to be a dead child, but a child who survived. It is a growing up, not outgrowing.

Misogyny is as institutionalized form shaping every aspect of our civilized form which derives from male fear and hatred of that wild country of being woman that they have denied and therefore cannot know.

Nature is a thing-in-itself rather than a thing-for-us such that a blossoming tree is just as wondrous whether blooming within or beyond the gaze of a woman admirer who would weep in its presence.

Opposition is responsible for maintaining that which is opposed.