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 great doctors all got their education off dirt pavements and poverty - not marble floors and foundations.
Martin H. FischerRead
We are now operating a school system in America that's more segregated than at any time since the death of Martin Luther King.
Jonathan KozolRead
You can't really be scientifically literate if you don't understand evolution. And you can't be an educated member of society if you don't understand science.
Eugenie ScottRead
African American children are significantly more likely to be obese than are white children. Nearly half of African American children will develop diabetes at some point in their lives. People, that's half of our children. ...We can build our kids the best schools on earth, but if they don't have the basic nutrition they need to concentrate, they're still going to have a challenge learning.
Michelle ObamaRead
I write not only what I want to read...I write all the things I should have been able to read.
Alice WalkerRead
And if we must educate our poets and artists in science, we must educate our masters, labour and capital, in art.
John B. S. HaldaneRead