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Fiction—and poetry and drama— cleanse the doors of perception.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Interpretation

What this quote means

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.

Themes

ArtPerceptionCleansingImaginationCreativity

In practice

Example use cases

In a speech about the importance of literature at a community event.

More from Ursula K. Le Guin

It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
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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

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