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Quote by Ursula K. Le Guin

Work

The Day Before the Revolution

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Author

Ursula K. Le Guin
Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin, born on October 21, 1929, is an esteemed American author of science fiction and fantasy. Known for her profound philosophical insights, rich imagination, and unique narrative style, Le Guin's works have won numerous literary awards and have had a significant impact on science fiction and fantasy literature. Her most famous works include the 'Earthsea' series and 'The Left Hand of Darkness', which have won her awards such as the Nebula and Hugo Awards, and she has also received the National Book Award for lifetime achievement for her contributions to literature. more

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“He saw my confusion and led me a slow, stately march to the library. There were shelves all the way around the room, and every shelf was crowed with books. I had not thought so many books existed.[...] There was a desk, several big leather chairs, a wooden floor covered with faded rugs, and in front of the fireplace a sofa with soft pillows. The shelves stopped several feet short of the ceiling, leaving room for a row of busts of what I imagined must be famous gentlemen. Lamps cast little pools light in the room, and the sound and smell of the fire reminded me of the fires the Kikuyu would make outside theirs huts when they roasted goats.”

“Perhaps the itinerant monks called ‘Gyrovagues’ were especially responsible for promoting this view of our condition as eternal strangers. They journeyed ceaselessly from monastery to monastery, without fixed abode, and they haven’t quite disappeared, even today: it seems there are still a handful tramping Mount Athos. They walk for their entire lives on narrow mountain paths, back and forth on a long repeated round, sleeping at nightfall wherever their feet have taken them; they spend their lives murmuring prayers on foot, walk all day without destination or goal, this way or that, taking branching paths at random, turning, returning, without going anywhere, illustrating through endless wandering their condition as permanent strangers in this profane world.”

“Many were incarcerated with the aberrant prosaic possibilities of ataraxia. Only the mentally sensitive few were cognizant of the nuisance to serenity and an actuality that lacked a balance betwixt havoc and sangfroid. The intellectual capabilities of the excellent idiosyncratic talents of a man with an agog outlook for de minimis fringe entities had left the portal ajar for the enlightened few, to get a glimpse of the obsecure reality that most had decided to claim socratic ignorance to evade inquiries.”

“Days of slow walking are very long: they make you live longer, because you have allowed every hour, every minute, every second to breathe, to deepen, instead of filling them up by straining the joints…”

“Walking: it hits you at first like an immense breathing in the ears. You feel the silence as if it were a great fresh wind blowing away clouds. There’s the silence of woodland. Clumps and groves of trees form shifting, uncertain walls around us. We walk along existing paths, narrow winding strips of beaten earth. We quickly lose our sense of direction. That silence is tremulous, uneasy. Then there’s the silence of tough summer afternoon walks across the flank of a mountain, stony paths, exposed to an uncompromising sun.”