QuoteProject
I think there is no way to write about being alone. To write is to tell something to somebody to communicate to others. . . . Solitude is noncommunication, the absence of others, the presence of a self sufficient to itself.
Ursula K. Le Guin
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote reflects on the paradox of writing about solitude, emphasizing the inherent communication that comes with writing despite its subject being isolation.

Ursula K. Le Guin's quote suggests that writing inherently involves communication, which contrasts with the experience of solitude where one is isolated from others. By stating that solitude is defined by noncommunication and the presence of the self, she highlights the complexity of expressing one's inner thoughts and experiences when one is alone, arguing that the act of writing is fundamentally a social interaction.

Themes

SolitudeCommunicationWritingSelfIsolation

In practice

Example use cases

This quote could be shared during a discussion on the nature of creativity and isolation.

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.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
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

Is it not a species of blasphemy to call the New Testament revealed religion, when we see in it such contradictions and absurdities.
Thomas PaineRead
What I wanted to get at is the value difference between pornographic playing-cards when you're a kid, and pornographic playing-cards when you're older. It's that when you're a kid you use the cards as a substitute for a real experience, and when you're older you use real experience as a substitute for the fantasy.
Edward AlbeeRead
Boredom is your window on the properties of time that one tends to ignore to the likely peril of one's mental equilibrium. It is your window on time's infinity. Once this window opens, don't try to shut it; on the contrary, throw it wide open.
Joseph BrodskyRead
Years, following years, steal something every day; At last they steal us from ourselves away.
HoraceRead
To be actively pro-life is to contribute to the renewal of society through the promotion of the common good. It is impossible to further the common good without acknowledging and defending the right to life, upon which all the other inalienable rights of individuals are founded and from which they develop.
Pope John Paul IiRead
There is no such thing as an attention span. There is only the quality of what you are viewing. This whole idea of an attention span is, I think, a misnomer. People have an infinite attention span if you are entertaining them.
Jerry SeinfeldRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.