10 Powerful Quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin, the award-winning literary titan famous for writing The Left Hand of Darkness and A Wizard of Earthsea, died on Monday at the age of 88. An extraordinary author whose writing challenged social norms, Le Guin published 20 novels and over 100 short stories—in addition to poetry collections, essay collections and children’s books—during her lifetime.

We’ve collected some of our favorite quotes from Le Guin’s work, and we hope they inspire you to read (or reread) her books.

“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.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan

“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.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed

“It is very hard for evil to take hold of the unconsenting soul.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

“Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“A profound love between two people involves, after all, the power and chance of doing profound hurt.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“All of us have to learn how to invent our lives, make them up, imagine them. We need to be taught these skills; we need guides to show us how. If we don’t, our lives get made up for us by other people.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination

“To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“We read books to find out who we are.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin, The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction

“The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness