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Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes about Art

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We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable - but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our

We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable - but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Art, Kings, Divine Right
Ursula K. Le Guin (2016). “Words Are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books, 2000-2016, with a Journal of a WriterÕs Week”, p.115, Small Beer Press

A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Art, Writing, Mean
"A Few Words to a Young Writer" by Ursula K. Le Guin, www.ursulakleguin.com. 2008.

This is. And thou art. There is no safety. There is no end. The word must be heard in silence. There must be darkness to see the stars. The dance is always danced above the hollow place, above the terrible abyss.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Art, Stars, Safety
Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “The Farthest Shore”, p.110, Simon and Schuster

Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art - the art of words.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Art, Divine Right, Resistance
Ursula K. Le Guin (2016). “Words Are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books, 2000-2016, with a Journal of a WriterÕs Week”, p.115, Small Beer Press

Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it is like anything else. What is the other text, the original? I have no answer. I suppose it is the source, the deep sea where ideas swim, and one catches them in nets of words and swings them shining into the boat... where in this metaphor they die and get canned and eaten in sandwiches.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Art, Writing, Swings

We need writers who know the difference between the production of a commodity and the practice of an art.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Art, Practice, Differences
Ursula K. Le Guin (2018). “Dreams Must Explain Themselves: The Selected Non-Fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin”, p.441, Hachette UK

I think the mystery of art lies in this, that artists’ relationship is essentially with their work — not with power, not with profit, not with themselves, not even with their audience.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Art, Lying, Thinking

Skill in writing frees you to write what you want to write. It may also show you what you want to write. Craft enables art.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Art, Writing, Skills
Ursula K. Le Guin (2015). “Steering the Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story”, p.13, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

If you have to find devices to coax yourself to stay focused on writing, perhaps you should not be writing what you're writing. And if this lack of motivation is a constant problem, perhaps writing is not your forte. I mean, what is the problem? If writing bores you, that is pretty fatal. If that is not the case, but you find that it is hard going and it just doesn't flow, well, what did you expect? It is work; art is work.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Art, Motivation, Mean
"Author Talk". Interview, www.teenreads.com. September 2006.

Do you know how to read?" "No. It is one of the black arts." He nodded. "But a useful one," he said.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Art, Black, Said
Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “The Tombs of Atuan”, p.136, Simon and Schuster

Sometimes one's very angry and preaches, but I know that to clinch a point is to close it. To leave the reader free to decide what your work means, that's the real art; it makes the work inexhaustible.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Art, Real, Mean
"The Magician". Interview with Maya Jaggi, www.theguardian.com. December 17, 2005.

Art and Entertainment are the same thing, in that the more deeply and genuinely entertaining a work is, the better art it is. To imply that Art is something heavy and solemn and dull, and Entertainment is modest but jolly and popular, is neo-Victorian idiocy at its worst.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Art, Dull, Entertainment
Ursula K. Le Guin, Susan Wood (1980). “The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction”, p.232, Ultramarine Publishing

There are dance artists, painting artists and writing artists. Authors are writing artists. You can practice art in whatever medium you choose, and words are mine.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Art, Writing, Practice

Art is craft: all art is always and essentially a work of craft: but in the true work of art, before the craft and after it, is some essential durable core of being, which is what the craft works on, and shows, and sets free. The statue in the stone. How does the artist find that, see it, before it's visible? That is a real question.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Art, Real, Essentials
Ursula K. Le Guin (2004). “The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination”, p.207, Shambhala Publications

Art is action. The way I live my life to its highest degree is by writing, the practice of art.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Art, Writing, Practice

In art, 'good enough' is not good enough.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Art, Not Good Enough, Good Enough
Ursula K. Le Guin, Susan Wood (1980). “The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction”, p.88, Ultramarine Publishing

Art, like sex, cannot be carried on indefinitely solo; after all, they have the same enemy, sterility.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Art, Sex, Enemy
Ursula K. Le Guin, Susan Wood (1980). “The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction”, p.27, Ultramarine Publishing

Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it is like anything else

Ursula K. Le Guin
Art, Writing, Mysterious

It was men's ambitions, they said, that had perverted all the arts to ends of gain.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Art, Ambition, Men
Ursula K. Le Guin (2016). “The Found and the Lost: The Collected Novellas of Ursula K. Le Guin”, p.488, Simon and Schuster

Writers are egotists. All artists are. They can’t be altruists and get their work done. And writers love to whine about the Solitude of the Author’s Life, and lock themselves into cork-lined rooms or droop around in bars in order to whine better. But although most writing is done in solitude, I believe that it is done, like all the arts, for an audience. That is to say, with an audience. All the arts are performance arts, only some of them are sneakier about it than others.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Art, Believe, Writing

I gather that a lot of the "pots" in the great museum in Baghdad, which we allowed to be looted and then gutted, are now for sale to the highest bidder on the art and archeology black market. This is good capitalism, I guess, while a museum, being a public trust and accessible to all, is anticapitalist, pretty damn near socialist in fact.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Art, Museums, Black
Source: www.guernicamag.com

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