Influences
When asked about her influences, she replied; "Once I learned to read, I read everything. I read all the famous fantasies -- Alice in Wonderland, and Wind in the Willows, and Kipling. I adored Kipling's Jungle Book. And then when I got older I found Lord Dunsany. He opened up a whole new world -- the world of pure fantasy. And ... Worm Ouroboros. Again, pure fantasy. Very, very fattening. And then my brother and I blundered into science fiction when I was 11 or 12. Early Asimov, things like that. But that didn't have too much effect on me. It wasn't until I came back to science fiction and discovered Sturgeon -- but particularly Cordwainer Smith. ... I read the story "Alpha Ralpha Boulevard," and it just made me go, "Wow! This stuff is so beautiful, and so strange, and I want to do something like that." Ursula is also influenced by books on Greek Mythology such as The God Beneath the Sea, written by Edward Blishen and Leon Garfield.
Read more about this topic: Ursula K. Le Guin
Famous quotes containing the word influences:
“Nothing changes more constantly than the past; for the past that influences our lives does not consist of what actually happened, but of what men believe happened.”
—Gerald W. Johnson (1890–1980)
“The first in time and the first in importance of the influences upon the mind is that of nature. Every day, the sun; and after sunset, night and her stars. Ever the winds blow; ever the grass grows.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Without looking, then, to those extraordinary social influences which are now acting in precisely this direction, but only at what is inevitably doing around us, I think we must regard the land as a commanding and increasing power on the citizen, the sanative and Americanizing influence, which promises to disclose new virtues for ages to come.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)