“You don’t have to know everything. You simply need to know where to find it when necessary.”
continuity (3) “After One Decade”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)
“It’s a rare gift, to know where you need to be, before you’ve been to all the places you don’t need to be.”
“The Bones of the Earth” (p. 138)
Earthsea Books, Tales from Earthsea (2001)
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Ursula K. Le Guin 292
American writer 1929–2018Related quotes
50 Cent
(1975) American rapper, actor, businessman, investor and television producer
Don't Push Me
Song lyrics, Get Rich or Die Tryin' (2003)
Daniel Abraham
(1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States
On his blog, talking about genre http://www.danielabraham.com/?p=160
Context: I think that the successful genres of a particular period are reflections of the needs and thoughts and social struggles of that time. When you see a bunch of similar projects meeting with success, you’ve found a place in the social landscape where a particular story (or moral or scenario) speaks to readers. You’ve found a place where the things that stories offer are most needed.
And since the thing that stories most often offer is comfort, you’ve found someplace rich with anxiety and uncertainty. (That’s what I meant when I said to Melinda Snodgrass that genre is where fears pool.)
“You know, you don’t really need me. All you need to do is read your own books.”
P. L. Travers
(1899–1996) Australian-British novelist, actress and journalist
The Paris Review interview (1982)
Context: I’ve always been interested in the Mother Goddess. Not long ago, a young person, whom I don’t know very well, sent a message to a mutual friend that said: “I’m an addict of Mary Poppins, and I want you to ask P. L. Travers if Mary Poppins is not really the Mother Goddess.” So, I sent back a message: “Well, I’ve only recently come to see that. She is either the Mother Goddess or one of her creatures — that is, if we’re going to look for mythological or fairy-tale origins of Mary Poppins.”
I’ve spent years thinking about it because the questions I’ve been asked, very perceptive questions by readers, have led me to examine what I wrote. The book was entirely spontaneous and not invented, not thought out. I never said, “Well, I’ll write a story about Mother Goddess and call it Mary Poppins.” It didn’t happen like that. I cannot summon up inspiration; I myself am summoned.
Once, when I was in the United States, I went to see a psychologist. It was during the war when I was feeling very cut off. I thought, Well, these people in psychology always want to see the kinds of things you’ve done, so I took as many of my books as were then written. I went and met the man, and he gave me another appointment. And at the next appointment the books were handed back to me with the words: “You know, you don’t really need me. All you need to do is read your own books.”
That was so interesting to me. I began to see, thinking about it, that people who write spontaneously as I do, not with invention, never really read their own books to learn from them. And I set myself to reading them. Every now and then I found myself saying, “But this is true. How did she know?” And then I realized that she is me. Now I can say much more about Mary Poppins because what was known to me in my blood and instincts has now come up to the surface in my head.
“You know that answer to that, don’t you. You don’t need me to tell you.”
Hyman George Rickover
(1900–1986) United States admiral
The Rickover Effect (1992)
Lee Scoresby to Stanislaus Grumman in Ch. 14 : Alamo Gulch
His Dark Materials, The Subtle Knife (1997)
David Brooks
(1961) American journalist, commentator and editor
2010s
Source: [David, Brooks, http://graduationwisdom.com/speeches/0088-brooks.htm, Commencement Address, May 14, 2011]