It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
Fiction—and poetry and drama— cleanse the doors of perception.
Interpretation
Art forms like fiction, poetry, and drama help us see the world in new ways.
Ursula K. Le Guin suggests that creative works such as fiction, poetry, and drama serve to clear our minds and broaden our perspectives, allowing us to experience reality more fully. By engaging with these forms of art, we can have our perceptions enhanced and revitalized, leading to deeper understanding and appreciation of life.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of literature at a community event.
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
I passionately hate the idea of being with it; I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.
Cinema and the arts invite viewers to focus on a story and, in doing so, peel away its layers and peer into the depths of the human soul.
I'm lucky enough to be able to make only movies I'm interested in seeing. That has to be an instinctive thrust. The audience knows when you're faking it. They can hang any kind of moniker they want on me.
A true diva is graceful, and talented, and strong, and fearless and brave and someone with humility.
I grew up when one of America's greatest black playwrights, August Wilson, was writing about life in Pittsburgh, but I never saw myself in any of his straight-male plays. And then I see 'Angels,' which was so honest and painful, and it had this black drag queen in it, Belize, with a big heart. I finally had a character to relate to.
Writing fiction is an inherently political activity because people-even imaginary ones-do not live in vacuums... From Twilight to Romeo and Juliet to The Little Mermaid, no work of the imagination is truly apolitical, because the world and our hopes for it are always part of our stories.
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