Ursula Le Guin died this year.  And as is my wont, I discover that people are kindred souls when it is too late.

Without knowing that this brilliant person had died, I was reading Ursula Le Guin, Conversations on Writing, with David Naimon.  Here are a couple of lovely quotes from the book memorializing their conversations:

“The interviewers I fear the most are the ones who’ve read what the publisher’s PR people say about your book, along with some handy pull quotes.  They read one of these aloud  and say in a sincere voice, ‘Now, tell us more about what you said here.’… .”
Ursula Le Guin  October 6, 2017

From the section on Fiction:

“Children know perfectly well that unicorns aren’t real…but they also know that books about unicorns, if they are good books, are true books…people who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons.  From within.”

Naimon notes that Le Guin has “been a strong voice behind the idea that science fiction and fantasy are as much literature as realist or memetic fiction or memoir. and that, at one time, Le Guin had even said: ‘Fake realism is the escapism of our time.’