It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
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
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.
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
Similar quotes
Traveling is my form of self-education. Every stream I fish now is not as good as it used to be. Traveling is my form of self-education. Every stream I fish now is not as good as it used to be. If you keep your eyes open as you travel around, you realize we are destroying this planet.
Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.
I did all of my learning on 'My Fair Lady.'
When I was growing up in rural Alabama, it was impossible for me to register to vote. I didn't become a registered voter until I moved to Tennessee, to Nashville, as a student.
Education, the great mumbo jumbo and fraud of the age purports to equip us to live and is prescribed as a universal remedy for everything from juvenile delinquency to premature senility.
The education of women is the best way to save the environment.