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DEAR TUMBLR,

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THIS BOOK HAS A QUEER, PoC, FEMALE PROTAGONIST 

IT IS A UNICORN OF A BOOK.

READ IT.

LOVE IT.

IT’S AMAZING.

LeGuin on Reading

“Reading is performance. The reader— the child under the blanket with a flashlight, the woman at the kitchen table, the man at the library desk— performs the work. The performance is silent. The reader hears the sounds of the words and the beat of the sentences only in their inner ear. Silent drummers on noiseless drums. An amazing performance in an amazing theater.”

— Ursula K. LeGuin

“Fantasy is true, of course. It isn't factual, but it is true. Children know that. Adults know it too, and that is precisely why many of them are afraid of fantasy. They know that its truth challenges, even threatens, all that is phony, unnecessary, and trivial in the life they have let themselves be forced into living.”

—Ursula K. LeGuin

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

—Ursula K. LeGuin: The Quotations Page

“Hardly anybody ever writes anything nice about introverts. Extroverts rule. This is rather odd when you realise that about nineteen writers out of twenty are introverts. We are being taught to be ashamed of not being 'outgoing'. But a writer's job is ingoing.”

—Ursula K. LeGuin

“A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.”

—Ursula K. LeGuin

“We are asked now to consider words as useful in only one way: as signs. Our philosophers, some of them, would have us agree that a word (sentence, statement) has value only in so far as it has one single meaning, points to one fact which is comprehensible to the rational intellect, logically sound, and -- ideally-- quantifiable. Apollo, the god of light, of reason, of proportion, harmony, number-- Apollo blinds those who press too close in worship. Don't look straight at the sun. Go into a dark bar for a bit and have a beer with Dionysus, every now and then. I talk about gods, I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth.”

—Ursula K. LeGuin, Introduction to The Left Hand Of Darkness (1969)

“Even in merely reading a fairy tale, we must let go our daylight convictions and trust ourselves to be guided by dark figures, in silence; and when we come back, it may be very hard to describe where we have been.”

—— Ursula K. Le Guin

“Please bring strange things. Please come bringing new things. Let very old things come into your hands. Let what you do not know come into your eyes. Let desert sand harden your feet. Let the arch of your feet be the mountains. Let the paths of your fingertips be your maps and the ways you go be the lines on your palms. Let there be deep snow in your inbreathing and your outbreath be the shining of ice. May your mouth contain the shapes of strange words. May you smell food cooking you have not eaten. May the spring of a foreign river be your navel. May your soul be at home where there are no houses. Walk carefully, well loved one, walk mindfully, well loved one, walk fearlessly, well loved one. Return with us, return to us, be always coming home.”

—Ursula K. LeGuin

“You sit down and you do it, and you do it, and you do it, until you have learned to do it. ”

—Ursula K. LeGuin
…on writing

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

—Ursula K. LeGuin

“The creative adult is the child who survived. ”

—Ursula K. LeGuin
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