It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
I don't teach writing classes anymore, and I'm really glad I don't, because I would feel very strange about telling people, 'Go out there and be a writer, and make a living from it.'
Interpretation
What this quote means
Ursula K. Le Guin expresses her discomfort with encouraging people to pursue writing as a career, reflecting on the challenges of the profession.
In this quote, Ursula K. Le Guin conveys her ambivalence about teaching writing and encouraging aspiring authors to seek a living in the field. She acknowledges the difficulties that come with the writing profession and the potential disillusionment that can accompany the pursuit of such a creative endeavor. Rather than promoting the romantic notion of being a successful writer, she seems to advocate for a more realistic understanding of the challenges writers face.
Themes
WritingCareerChallengesCreativityRealism
In practice
Example use cases
In a workshop on creative writing, I cited Le Guin to emphasize the realities of pursuing a writing career.
More from Ursula K. Le Guin
All quotes →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.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
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.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
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.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
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
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
Similar quotes
The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.
Anatole FranceRead
Sometimes the most brilliant and intelligent minds do not shine in standardized tests because they do not have standardized minds.
Diane RavitchRead
It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail. It is a grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.
Albert EinsteinRead
Doing research on the Web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly.
Roger EbertRead
To push for excellence today without continuing to push for access for less privileged students is to undermine the crucial but incomplete gains that have been made. Equity and excellence cannot be divided.
Ernest L. BoyerRead
That best academy, a mother's knee.
James Russell LowellRead