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Readers, after all, are making the world with you. You give them the materials, but it's the readers who build that world in their own minds.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Readers interpret and create worlds through their imagination based on the materials provided by writers.

In this quote, Ursula K. Le Guin emphasizes the collaborative relationship between writers and readers. While authors provide the raw material of stories, it is the readers who actively engage with these texts, interpreting and constructing unique worlds in their minds, showcasing the power of imagination and the importance of the reader's role in storytelling.

Themes

ReadingImaginationStorytellingCreativityCollaboration

In practice

Example use cases

A speaker at a literary festival might use this quote to highlight the importance of the reader's imagination.

More from Ursula K. Le Guin

It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
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In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we're done with it, we may find - if it's a good novel - that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have changed a little... But it's very hard to say just what we learned, how we were changed.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
Reason is a faculty far larger than mere objective force. When either the political or the scientific discourse announces itself as the voice of reason, it is playing God, and should be spanked and stood in the corner.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
When he found that the administrators were upset, he laughed. β€œDo they expect students not to be anarchists?” he said. β€œWhat else can the young be? When you are on the bottom, you must organize from the bottom up
Ursula K. Le GuinRead

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