It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
All makers must leave room for the acts of the spirit. But they have to work hard and carefully, and wait patiently, to deserve them.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Creativity requires both hard work and openness to inspiration.
This quote highlights the balance between diligent effort and the necessity of allowing space for inspiration or creativity to emerge. It suggests that while creators must commit to their craft through hard work and careful planning, they also need to remain receptive to the spontaneous and often unpredictable nature of creative inspiration, which requires patience and humility.
Themes
CreativityInspirationHard WorkPatienceArt
In practice
Example use cases
During a motivational speech about the creative process.
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
Because, as we all know, it’s easier to do trivial things that are urgent than it is to do important things that are not urgent, like thinking. And it’s also easier to do little things we know we can do than to start on big things that we’re not so sure about.
John CleeseRead
The true lover of knowledge naturally strives for truth, and is not content with common opinion, but soars with undimmed and unwearied passion till he grasps the essential nature of things.
PlatoRead
During periods of relaxation after concentrated intellectual activity, the intuitive mind seems to take over and can produce the sudden clarifying insights which give so much joy and delight.
Fritjof CapraRead
Only a person who is congenially self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays
E. B. WhiteRead
We are ever free if we would only believe it, only have faith enough.
Swami VivekanandaRead
To be wholly devoted to some intellectual exercise is to have succeeded in life.
Robert Louis StevensonRead