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
Examine every word you put on paper. You'll find a surprising number that don't serve any purpose.
Some kids win the lottery at birth; far too many don't - and most people have a hard time catching up over the rest of their lives. Children raised in disadvantaged environments are not only much less likely to succeed in school or in society, but they are also much less likely to be healthy adults.
To be taught to read—what is the use of that, if you know not whether what you read is false or true? To be taught to write or to speak—but what is the use of speaking, if you have nothing to say? To be taught to think—nay, what is the use of being able to think, if you have nothing to think of? But to be taught to see is to gain word and thought at once, and both true.
Merely gathering knowledge may become the most useless work a man can do. What can you do to help and heal the world? That is the educational test.
Education from the lowest to the highest form must have for its object the training of the individual so that, in seeking the fullest satisfaction of his own nature, he will harmoniously perform his function as a member of a corporate society.
'Charlotte's Web,' which I read sitting on my mother's lap, was the most emotional experience: that was when I made the leap from seeing how to untangle words to realizing how books both contain and convey strong feelings.