Quotes About Imagination

David tried to give a form to the beast at the heart of the poem but found that he could not. It was more difficult than it appeared, for nothing quite seemed to fit. Instead, he could only conjure up a half-formed being that crouched in the cobwebbed corners of his imagination where all the things that he feared curled and slithered upon one another in the darkness.

David could tell, by looking at her face as she read, whether or not the story contained in the book was living inside her, and she in it, and he would recall again all that she had told him about stories and tales and the power that they wield over us, and that we in turn wield over them.

The stories were always looking for a way to be told, to be brought to life through books and reading. That was how they crossed over from their world into ours.

Stories come alive in the telling. (…)They lay dormant, hoping for the chance to emerge. Once someone started to read them, they could begin to change. They could take root in the imagination and transform the reader. Stories wanted to be read.

He was just thinking aloud, ruling out possibilities by releasing them into the air, like canaries in the coal mine of his mind.

These were the tales that echoed in the head long after the books that contained them were cast aside.

I was a child who loved books, and I am an adult who is the product of books.

Stories were different, though: they came alive in the telling.

For a lifetime was but a moment in that place, and each man dreams his own heaven.

Real life was curious enough without the embellishments of fiction.

Books are not fixed objects: they transmit words and ideas. Their effect on each reader is unique. They put pictures in our minds. They take root. You

Stories were different, though: they came alive in the telling. Without a human voice to read them aloud, or a pair of wide eyes following them by flashlight beneath a blanket, they had no real existence in our world.

It's a natural consequence of the capacity of a bookstore or library to contain entire worlds, whole universes, and all contained between the covers of books. In that sense, every library or bookstore is practically infinite. This library takes that to its logical conclusion.

This world was not like the world of his stories.

She laughed loudly. It sounded to her husband like someone pushing a witch in a barrel over a waterfall. He pictured his wife in a barrel falling into very deep water, and this cheered him up a bit.

Most writers tend to create characters who are like them – only slightly better looking, taller, younger and more witty

And the Crooked Man heard her dreams, because that was where he wandered. His place was the land of the imagination, the world where stories began.

Sometimes he imagines himself peeling away Babe's integuments, excavating the seams, so that Babe becomes thinner and thinner, smaller and smaller, until at last all that remains is the shining core of the man, the radiance within. But Babe is immune from such exploration, and when disease finally pares away the layers of Babe, all that is left is death.

The mind is a theater. It cannot be allowed to go dark. It must be maintained.

Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today, I wish, I wish he'd go away . . . —

Most people who talked about angels seemed to picture a fusion of Tinker Bell and a crossing guard...

They were both an escape from reality and an alternative reality themselves.

Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today, I wish, I wish he'd go away . . . William Hughes Mearns, "Antigonish

he would talk to them of stories and books, and explain to them how stories wanted to be told and books wanted to be read, and how everything that they ever needed to know about life and the land of which he wrote, or about any land or realm that they could imagine, was contained in books.