Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes

I don't see art as entertainment.

Art is an infinitely precious good, a draught both refreshing and cheering which restores the stomach and the mind to the natural equilibrium of the ideal.

a work that intends to be art must first be entertaining.

A work of art is a world in itself reflecting senses and emotions of the artist's world. Just as a flower, by virtue of its existence as a complete organism is both ornamental and self-sufficient as to color, form, and texture, so art, because of its singular existence is more than mere ornament.

I strongly believe cinema is popular culture. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. That's life.

I don't think it's an unnatural thing at all for my collaborations or projects to be seen as art but entertainment at the same time.

I think it was Roger Fry who first coined what he took to be a final definition of a work of art, whether it was a painting, building, poem or Hepplewhite chair. He said that the best works of art are finished products that preserve 'a valuable state of mind'.

Great art always transcends its culture, while lesser art merely reflects it.

We started to confuse entertainment with art, because art has a component of entertainment. It has to have that or it becomes too boring. It becomes too lost in its own devices. But I just think that we started to lose, and even before that, it's not necessary.

Shall I tell you what I think are the two qualities of a work of art? First, it must be indescribable, and second, it must be inimitable.

The purpose of all art is to cause a deep and emotion, also one that is entertaining or pleasing. Out of the depth and entertainment comes value.

Music must take rank as the highest of the fine arts - as the one which, more than any other, ministers to the human spirit.

I think the form, the Hollywood movie, I think the quality is obviously always going to be there and I think that the question of taste, there's always a question of taste.

With a movie you're creating from the beginning this particular work, let's not call it work of art, because very few movies are works of art, let's just call them bits of popular culture, whatever they are, sometimes very rarely by accident a movie becomes a work of art.

I want to make it clear: it's not that I hate mainstream cinema. It's perfectly fine. There are a lot of people who need to escape, because they are in very difficult situations, so they have the right to escape from the world. But this has nothing to do with an art form.

A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual.

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.

I've always had this rule of thumb: If you have fun making it, then someone will have fun watching it.

Art is doing. Art deals directly with life.

I think all art - even one as lowly as making jokes about celebrities - is there to make a connection.

The idea that popular arts were shallow by definition and the traditional arts were profound was dead, I thought, and I wanted to prove it.

We do want to be diverted and be interested and be provoked by popular culture - by art, if we're lucky. And it's amazing how often people have lost sight of this.

[In art] you are telling the reader or the listener or the viewer something he already knows but which he doesn't quite know that he knows, so that in the action of communication he experiences a recognition, a feeling that he has been there before, a shock of recognition.

What shall I say about poetry? What shall I say about those clouds, or about the sky? Look; look at them; look at it! And nothing more. Don't you understand anything about poetry? Leave that to the critics and the professors. For neither you, nor I, nor any poet knows what poetry is.