Dreams Must Explain Themselves: The Selected Non-Fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin

Participants who participate, who write, read, criticize, and discuss, are learning a great deal. First of all, they’re learning to take criticism, learning that they can take criticism. Negative, positive, aggressive, constructive, valuable, stupid, they can take it. Most of us can, but we don’t think we can till we do; and the fear of it can be c

The writer at her work is odd, is peculiar, is particular, certainly, but not, I think, singular. She tends to the plural.

So seen, stupidity could be defined as a failure to make enough connections, and insanity as severe repeated error in making connections – in telling The Story of My Life.

language of power – of social power; I shall call it the father tongue.

The old world is made new at the birth of every baby, and every New Year’s Day, and every morning, and the Buddhist says at every instant.

And this is a real issue, I think: the question of “the unspeakable.” If one believes that words are acts, as I do, then one must hold writers responsible for what their words do.

Reading is an active transaction between the text and the reader. The text is under the control of the reader – she can skip, linger, interpret, misinterpret, return, ponder, go along with the story or refuse to go along with it, make judgments, revise her judgments; she has time and room to genuinely interact. A novel is an active, ongoing collabo

“Liberty is a better husband than love to many of us,”

The artist deals with what cannot be said in words. The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.