If you see a whole thing - it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives... But up close a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. - Ursula K. LeGuin

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Ursula-isms

Today is Ursula K. Le Guin's 80th birthday. Since this blog is named for one of her quotes, I thought I'd share a few others that have been attributed to her and resonate with me:
  • Traveling is bad for fiction but good for poetry. That's the only cycle I have noticed.
  • There are no right answers to wrong questions.
  • Love does not sit there, like a stone; it has be be made like bread, remade all the time, made new.
  • The creative adult is the child that has survived.
  • The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader reading it makes it live: a live thing, a story.
  • The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not know what comes next.
Happy Birthday Ursula.

5 comments:

Annie said...

Hi Brigindo,
Thank you for publishing these "gems." She's one of my favorite writers who writes about writing, and life. I'm reading parts of Language of the Night right now. I didn't realize she was quite that old, and I'm happy to know it's her birthday.

life_of_a_fool said...

great quotes! happy birthday indeed.

comebacknikki said...

The right answers/wrong questions quote is one of my favorites. Yay, Ursula! :)

Julie said...

Awesome quotes. I particularly love what she says about the reader. It's so true, isn't it? I love a writer who appreciates readers. Too many writers take their readers for granted.

And "the creative adult is the child that has survived" is fantastic. I just re-read the one about traveling. She is so brilliant. Happy birthday, Ursula!

Anonymous said...

It's because of you that I've begun to read and love LeGuin, thanks for pointing her out to me.