they know the difference, too, ...

Excerpt from the 2015 Ursula K. Le Guin Vogue interview.
Interviewer: Abby Aguirre

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In response to Le Guin‘s 2014 national book award remarks;

‚We’ll need writers who can remember freedom. [...] We need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art,‘

Aguirre asks Le Guin if she 'felt we are losing grasp of this difference.‘

Le Guin replies:

‚I don’t think we as readers and writers are. But I think the powerful market forces and corporations that increasingly control writing—they know the difference, too, and what they want is the market commodity. They don‘t care about the art. There’s not ever been very much profit in art, really, despite Damien Hirst. [...] there should remain a large and noble place for the writing that is not written to sell but to be itself.‘

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Article Link: https://www.vogue.com/article/ursula-le-guin-steering-the-craft

Image: © Getty - Dan Tuffs. Portland / l'Oregon, 2005.