“...talk is an art and a pleasure, not a matter of mere use and need.” — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“Art isn’t explanation. Art is what an artist does, not what an artist explains.” — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
The artist deals in what cannot be said in words. The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words. The novelist… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Art, like sex, cannot be carried on indefinitely solo; after all, they have the same enemy, sterility. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“…what I told them was 'a poem,' a thing made by a maker, a work of art, part history of long ago,… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Any artist must expect to work amid the total, rational indifference of everybody else to their work, for years, perhaps for life. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Great artists make the roads; good teachers and good companions can point them out. But there ain't no free rides, baby. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Art is action. The way I live my life to its highest degree is by writing, the practice of art. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Do you know how to read?" "No. It is one of the black arts." He nodded. "But a useful one," he said. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“An artist makes the world her world. An artist makes her world the world. For a little while. For as long as… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“No ideologues, not even religious ones, are going to be happy with Tolkien, unless they manage it by misreading him. For like… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“Meaning in art isn’t the same as meaning in science. The meaning of the second law of thermodynamics, so long as the… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Great artists make the roads; good teachers and good companions can point them out. But there ain't no free rides, baby. No… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“The art of one's own time tends to be formidable . . . because we have to learn how and where to… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable - but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“Art is not a horse race. Literature is not the Olympics. The hell with The Great American Novel. We have all the… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“The daily routine of most adults is so heavy and artificial that we are closed off to much of the world. We… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“But if modesty is interpreted not as diffidence or self-effacingness, but as non-overweening, a realistic assessment of the job to be done… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
If you have to find devices to coax yourself to stay focused on writing, perhaps you should not be writing what you're… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“I do not say that artists cannot be seers, inspired: that the awen cannot come upon them, and the god speak through… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Art is craft: all art is always and essentially a work of craft: but in the true work of art, before the… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
I gather that a lot of the "pots" in the great museum in Baghdad, which we allowed to be looted and then… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Writers are egotists. All artists are. They can’t be altruists and get their work done. And writers love to whine about the… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“Literature is the extant body of written art. All novels belong to it. The value judgement concealed in distinguishing one novel as… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“My mother died at eighty-three, of cancer, in pain, her spleen enlarged so that her body was misshapen. Is that the person… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Artists are people who are not at all interested in the facts - only in the truth. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Skill in writing frees you to write what you want to write. It may also show you what you want to write.… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art - the art of words. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Much arrogance is necessary equipment for an artist, I think. Not sufficient, but necessary. It carries one across the gaps. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
I talk about the gods, I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
It was men's ambitions, they said, that had perverted all the arts to ends of gain. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“There were people who swore as an art form—performing a dazzling juncture of the inordinate and the unexpected.” — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
There are dance artists, painting artists and writing artists. Authors are writing artists. You can practice art in whatever medium you choose,… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
We need writers who know the difference between the production of a commodity and the practice of an art. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“...I wore his blood for clothing, on my legs and thighs and hands: a dry, stiff, brown garment with no warmth in it.” — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it is like… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
“Aeneas' mother is a star?" "No; a goddess." I said cautiously, "Venus is the power that we invoke in spring, in the garden, when… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
“Meaning - this is perhaps the common note, the bane I am seeking. What is the Meaning of this book, this event in the… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
For fantasy is true, of course. It isn't factual, but it is true. Children know that. Adults know it too, and that is precisely… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
“. . . chronosophy does involve ethics. Because our sense of time involves our ability to separate cause and effect, means and end. The… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
“If both you and your plane are on time, the airport is merely a diffuse, short, miserable prelude to the intense, long, miserable plane… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
Between thought and spoken word is a gap where intention can enter, the symbol be twisted aside, and the lie come to be. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
I have no control over my writing. I have lots of good intentions, but no control. There's a story that wants to be told. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
“I did a lot today. That is, I did something. The only thing I have ever done. I pressed a button. It took the… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
To me the female principle is, or at least historically has been, basically anarchic. It values order without constraint, rule by custom not by… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
“Hector had no virtue?” “Of course he did. He won all his battles, till the last one.” “We all do,” Aeneas remarked.” — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
“I was willing to believe him that most modern writing was trash, on the evidence that so much old writing was trash; but I… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
“Can women operate as women in a male institution without becoming imitation men?” — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
