The Wave in the Mind Quotes

“People are supposed to be lean. You can’t be too thin, everybody says so, especially anorexics. People are supposed to be lean and taut, because that’s how men generally are, lean and taut, or anyhow that’s how a lot of men start out and some of them even stay that way. And men are people, people are men, that has been well established, and so people, real people, the right kind of people, are lean. But I’m really lousy at being people, because I’m not lean at all but sort of podgy, with actual fat places. I am untaut.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination

“Sso, when I was born there actually were only men. People were men. They all had one pronoun, his pronoun; so that's who I am. I am the generic he as in: 'if anybody needs an abortion he will have to go to another state.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader and the Imagination

“The story is the way the story is told.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination

“If you are fantasising, you may be daydreaming, or you might be using your imagination therapeutically as a means of discovering reasons Reason does not know, discovering yourself to yourself.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination

“Huge heavy things come and stand on granite and the granite just stays there and doesn’t react and doesn’t give way and doesn’t adapt and doesn’t oblige and when the huge heavy things walk away the granite is there just the same as it was before, just exactly the same, admirably. To change granite you have to blow it up.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination

“Contrast J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. The author adopts the childish view of adults as inhumanly powerful and uncomprehending, and never goes beyond it; and so his novel, published for adults, is better appreciated by ten-year-olds. The”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination

“sentences aren’t. They go on and on, all full of syntax and qualifying clauses and confusing references and getting old. And that brings up the real proof of what a mess I have made of being a man: I am not even young. Just about the time they finally started inventing women, I started getting old. And I went right on doing it. Shamelessly. I have allowed myself to get old and haven’t done one single thing about it, with a gun or anything. What”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination

“Ernest Hemingway would have died rather than have syntax. Or semicolons. 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.” And”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination

“That joy must not be sold. It must not be “privatised,” made into another privilege for the privileged. A public library is a public trust. And that freedom must not be compromised. It must be available to all who need it, and that’s everyone, when they need it, and that’s always.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination

“My favorite quotation from the great frontiersman Julius Caesar: “It was not certain that Britannia existed, until I went there.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination

“Todos tenemos que aprender a inventarnos una vida, crearla, imaginarla. Necesitamos que nos enseñen esas capacidades; necesitamos guías que nos muestren cómo hacerlo. Si no lo hacemos nuestras vidas acaban siendo controladas por los demás.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader and the Imagination

“Don’t WORry if OTHers disaGREE DON’T WORry if OTHers DISagree Don’t WORry if OTHers DISaGREE”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination

“We need to talk together, speaker and hearer here, now. We know that. We feel it. We feel the absence of it.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination

“El ejercicio de la imaginación es peligroso para quienes se aprovechan del estado de las cosas porque tiene el poder de demostrar que el estado de las cosas no es permanente, ni universal, ni necesario.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader and the Imagination

“Para mí, lo importante no es ofrecer una esperanza específica de progreso sino, al presentar una realidad alternativa imaginada pero convincente, sacudir mi mente, y también la mente del lector, a fin de que ambos abandonemos la costumbre perezosa y timorata de pensar que la manera en que vivimos ahora es la única manera en que se puede vivir. Esta inercia es lo que permite que no se cuestionen las instituciones injustas”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader and the Imagination

“Respeto las comas mucho más que a los congresistas.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader and the Imagination

“Toda obra de arte tiene razones que la razón no entiende por completo.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader and the Imagination

“Las artes tienen una enorme capacidad para establecer comunidades humanas y cohesionarlas. Las historias contadas, o escritas, din suda nos sirven para ampliar el entendimiento que tenemos de los demás y de nuestro lugar en el mundo.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader and the Imagination

“Los seres humanos siempre han formado grupos para imaginar cómo vivir mejor y ayudarse los unos a los otros a conseguirlo.
La función esencial de la comunidad humana es alcanzar algún acuerdo sobre qué es lo que queremos que aprenda nuestra infancia y, luego, colaborar en su aprendizaje y enseñanza para que podamos avanzar por el camino que creemos correcto.
Las comunidades pequeñas con tradiciones sólidas suelen tener claro el camino que quieren tomar, y lo enseñan muy bien.
Pero la tradición puede cristalizar la imaginación hasta fosilizarla en un dogma e impedir las nuevas ideas.
Las comunidades más grandes, tales como las ciudades, proporcionan el espacio necesario para que las personas imaginen alternativas, aprendan de otros con tradiciones diferentes e inventen sus propias maneras de vivir.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader and the Imagination

“En efecto, creo que las novelas son bellas. Para mí una novela puede ser tan bella como una sinfonía, como el mar. Tan completa, verdadera, amplia, compleja, confusa, profunda, perturbadora y positiva para el alma como el mar, cuyas olas rompen y se asientan, cuyas mareas suben y bajan.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader and the Imagination

“¿Cuánto tiempo puede permanecer alejada y solitaria una isla en el mar cada vez más hondo de la humanidad?”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader and the Imagination

“The story is the way the story is told. Adam’s”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination