Art Quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin

In art, 'good enough' is not good enough.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

“Art isn’t explanation. Art is what an artist does, not what an artist explains.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin

The artist deals with what cannot be said in words.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

“...talk is an art and a pleasure, not a matter of mere use and need.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin

Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art - the art of words.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

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

Art is action. The way I live my life to its highest degree is by writing, the practice of art.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

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

Artists are people who are not at all interested in the facts - only in the truth.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

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

Art, like sex, cannot be carried on indefinitely solo; after all, they have the same enemy, sterility.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

“…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

“The art of one's own time tends to be formidable . . . because we have to learn how and where to…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

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

“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

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

“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

“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

“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

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

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

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

“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

“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

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

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

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

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

“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

“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

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

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

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

We need writers who know the difference between the production of a commodity and the practice of an art.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

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

It was men's ambitions, they said, that had perverted all the arts to ends of gain.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

“There were people who swore as an art form—performing a dazzling juncture of the inordinate and the unexpected.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin

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

Much arrogance is necessary equipment for an artist, I think. Not sufficient, but necessary. It carries one across the gaps.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

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