American Masters

- I don't offer any 10 easy steps to fame and fortune as an author because I know that in art, there are no easy steps.

To learn to make something well can take your whole life and it's worth it.

That'll do, I think.

(attendees laughing) So, shall we do Q and A?

The big thing that has happened to both fantasy and science fiction in my lifetime is that they have come all the way out of that genre closet that they were forced into and are recognized as literature.

- You now have a generation that grew up that doesn't quite understand why these artificial divisions ever existed.

- Le Guin was ahead of her time and we needed to catch back up to her.

- The only question that should matter is, is this any good or not?

I read A Wizard of Earthsea and, just little things rearranged in my head, that's when I powerfully, hungrily, more than anything else I'd ever felt, wanted to be a writer.

- You cannot deny Ursula Le Guin's influence on writers now of all kinds.

And I think that in the final analysis is much more important than whether she was being reviewed as she should have been reviewed in 1975 because she was being read by the people who would grow up to change opinions and change the world.

- It's certainly a remarkable writer who can meet you when you're 10 years old and give you something wonderful to read and still be there for you when you're 45 years old and everywhere in between.

I think she's one of the greatest writers that the 20th century American literary scene produced.

- [David] It's like that famous Earth shot called Earthrise where we see our Earth just rising over the moon, this little, blue, fragile circle.

Ursula's usage of science fiction, I feel is to make these Earthrise photographs so we can perhaps for the first time see our world from a different perspective.

If a world is dreamable, maybe it can be dreamed into being.

(light mellow music) - When I take you to the valley, you'll see the blue hills on the left and the blue hills on the right, the rainbow and the vineyards under the rainbow late in the rainy season and maybe you'll say, there it is, that's it.

But I'll say, a little farther.

We'll go on, I hope, and you'll see the roofs of the little towns and the hillsides yellow with wild oats and maybe you'll say, let's stop here, this is it!

But I'll say, a little farther yet.

We'll go on and you'll hear the quail calling on the mountain by the springs of the river.

And looking back, you'll see the river running downward through the wild hills behind, below and you'll say, isn't that it, the valley?

And all I'll be able to say is, drink this water of the spring, rest here a while.

We have a long way yet to go and I can't go without you.

(light mellow music) (light exciting music) ♪