"The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else."
Ursula K. Le Guin

January 1, 1970

Quote Details

Sources

Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1974

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ursula_K._Le_Guin