“Art isn’t explanation. Art is what an artist does, not what an artist explains.” — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“...talk is an art and a pleasure, not a matter of mere use and need.” — 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
“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
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
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
Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art - the art of words. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
I think the mystery of art lies in this, that artists’ relationship is essentially with their work — not with power, not… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“I think we shall have trouble learning how to lie, having for so long practiced the art of going round and round… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Art and Entertainment are the same thing, in that the more deeply and genuinely entertaining a work is, the better art it… — 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
“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
Sometimes one's very angry and preaches, but I know that to clinch a point is to close it. To leave the reader… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“But I think we will have trouble learning how to lie, having for so long practiced the art of going round an… — 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
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
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
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
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
“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
“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
“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
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
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
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
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
Artists are people who are not at all interested in the facts - only in the truth. — 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
“…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
Art, like sex, cannot be carried on indefinitely solo; after all, they have the same enemy, sterility. — 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
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
“...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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
“. . . 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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
