Quotes About Imagination

My college roommate gave me her copy of 'Lord of the Rings,' and I read that probably five or six times - not because I think it's the greatest thing ever written, though some people certainly think it is - but the world he creates is so vivid. So real that he designed its own languages, history and mythology.

I have written, probably, more books for children than any other writer, from story-books to plays, and can claim to know more about interesting children than most.

That's the beauty of creativity. It comes from the ether. I like to think, sometimes, it's like I haven't written it, it's more like I just reached up and grabbed it from somewhere. That song, 'Song of the Red Rock Mountain,' is one of them. I recorded it and thought, 'Where did that come from?'

It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming of themselves like grass.

It's been a while since I've written a novel aimed at the adult market, but I never sit down and say to myself, 'Okay, now I'm going to write something for us old folks.' I get gripped by an idea, and I go where the idea takes me.

When you've written a film and directed it and it comes out exactly as you imagined it, it's pretty boring.

In school, my favourite class was when we were given a subject for an essay on which we could freewheel. And poetry: I've always written it and loved the way words interact, in meaning and in sound.

I have written 20 books, and each one is like having a baby. Writing is not easy; some people want to write books but just can't put a story together. I can put together a story that interests both me and my readers.

It's pretty rare that something I've written is close to something that's pre-existed.

An empty book is like an infant's soul, in which anything may be written. It is capable of all things, but containeth nothing. I have a mind to fill this with profitable wonders.

'Where The Wild Things Are,' I think I could have written on my own. When I brought Dave Eggers on, I already had 60 pages of notes. I technically could have, but I don't think I was ready to. I needed him to be there and help me.

If you take 'The Hobbit' and 'The Lord of the Rings' as books, one is written for children, and one is an adult's book.

Sometimes, I sit with my guitar and start playing... something or the other pops into my head... Basically, I write whatever that comes to my mind. I've written a lot of songs, but they are lying in my cupboard... I mean to do something about them someday.

In The Touch, the love scenes are the same as they were in The Thorn Birds or anything else I've ever written. I find a way of saying that either it was heaven or hell but in a way that still leaves room for the reader to use their own imagination.

I have written a lot about the fine arts, but I'd never written about the literary arts, and so on some level Dante really, you know, spoke to me, as new ground but also familiar ground.

When you are in the midst of writing a book, I think it is important to touch base every day. If I wasn't writing something, I would be reading back what I'd already written. I did take a month off writing at one point and found it really difficult to get back into the world I'd created.

I have read only the first 'Harry Potter' book. I thought it excellent, perhaps the best thing written for older children since The Hobbit. I wish the books had been around when my kids were the right age for them.

The unfolding of a story is both as exciting and as difficult for each and every novel I've written, regardless of time and place.

All stories I write are compulsive. Anything I've ever written was because I don't have a choice. I write stories because I can't wait to tell it, I can't wait to see how it ends.

Everything I've ever written, I had a very distinct vision of what I wanted it to look like. But, other directors never do it that way.

The problem is once you've written the opening paragraph and worked out how the rest of the story will go in your head, there's nothing in it for you. I write in longhand using disposable fountain pens on the right-hand side of the notebook for the first draft, then I rewrite some of the sentences and paragraphs on the left-hand side.

I make up stories in my head all the time, but I've never written them down. But I write a lot of story songs. Any song I'm singing, I sort of see it like a movie in my head. That's why a lot of times I close my eyes when I'm singing.

The picture alone, without the written word, leaves half the story untold.

Reading asks that you bring your whole life experience and your ability to decode the written word and your creative imagination to the page and be a co-author with the writer, because the story is just squiggles on the page unless you have a reader.