It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
Art is action. The way I live my life to its highest degree is by writing, the practice of art.
Interpretation
Art is not just a product but a way of living and expressing oneself.
In this quote, Ursula K. Le Guin emphasizes that art is intertwined with daily actions and decisions, suggesting that the true essence of living fully is found in the practice and expression of one's creativity, particularly through writing. For Le Guin, engaging in artistic practice elevates life to its fullest potential, making art a fundamental aspect of existence rather than a mere hobby or profession.
In practice
In a motivational speech about creativity and living authentically.
It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we're done with it, we may find - if it's a good novel - that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have changed a little... But it's very hard to say just what we learned, how we were changed.
Reason is a faculty far larger than mere objective force. When either the political or the scientific discourse announces itself as the voice of reason, it is playing God, and should be spanked and stood in the corner.
The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.
We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.
When he found that the administrators were upset, he laughed. “Do they expect students not to be anarchists?” he said. “What else can the young be? When you are on the bottom, you must organize from the bottom up
Everyone has a creative impulse, and has the right to create, and should.
My philosophy is that I'm an artist. I perform an art not with a paint brush or a camera. I perform with bodily movement. Instead of exhibiting my art in a museum or a book or on canvas, I exhibit my art in front of the multitudes.
In my naïvety, I thought people who were in rock 'n' roll bands were great artists, and it was a huge shock to the system to realise that they weren't, that they didn't even aspire to be, really. Some of them did, maybe, but some of them, like Samson, were very frightened of the idea.
Because, if one is writing novels today, concentrating on the beauty of the prose is right up there with concentrating on your semi-colons, for wasted effort.
They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.
Poets are being pursued by the philosophers today, out of the poverty of philosophy. God damn it, you might think a man had no business to be writing, to be a poet unless some philosophic stinker gave him permission.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.