“But if modesty is interpreted not as diffidence or self-effacingness, but as non-overweening, a realistic assessment of the job to be done and one's ability to do it, then you might say the chief virtue of excellent artists is their modesty...But knowing your limits and going to them isn't arrogance. It's greatness of spirit.”

American author

Ursula K. Le Guin was an American author, active from the late 1950s into the early twenty-first century. She is best known for speculative fiction, especially the science fiction set in her Hainish universe and the fantasy series Earthsea. Her first work appeared in 1959, and her career lasted nearly sixty years. Over that time she wrote more than twenty novels and more than a hundred short stories, along with poetry, literary criticism, translations, and children's books. Although she was often described as a science fiction writer, she said she would rather be known as an American novelist.