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I work in my mind. What I do is done in my mind. And what my hands do with it in writing it down is not the same as what the hands of the weaver do with the yarn, or the potter’s hands with the clay, or the cabinetmaker’s with the wood. If what I do, what I make, is beautiful, it isn’t a physical beauty. It’s imaginary, it takes place in the mind—my mind, and my reader’s. You could say that I hear voices and believe the voices are real (which would mean I was schizophrenic, but the proverb test proves I’m not—I do, I do understand it, Doctor!). And that then by writing what I hear, I induce or compel readers to believe the voices are real too . . . That doesn’t describe it well, though. It doesn’t feel that way. I don’t really know what it is I’ve done all my life, this wordworking. But I know that to me words are things, almost immaterial but actual and real things, and that I like them. I like their most material aspect: the sound of them, heard in the mind or spoken by the voice.
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Ursula K. Le Guin (No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters)