Quotes About Imagination

She could, she thinks, have entered another world. She could have had a life as potent and dangerous as literature itself.

I could not help investing his every quality with a heightened sense of the real, nor could I quit wondering, from moment to moment, what it was like to be inside his skin.

Is this what it's like to go crazy? She'd never imagined it like this.

The lives great artists live and the books they write are two very different things.

I'm sure there are people who are content to run errands and report for work on time and wait, with an enlivening eagerness, for the lunch bell. I wish them well. They have, however, never been the subjects of novels, and in all likelihood, will never be.

But then again, in addition to paper and cardboard...a little illuminated box, that contains thousands and thousands of stories? People aren't fascinated by that? Really?

Many readers simply can't stomach fantasy. They immediately picture elves with broadswords or mighty-thewed barbarians with battle axes, seeking the bejeweled Coronet of Obeisance ... (But) the best fantasies pull aside the velvet curtain of mere appearance. ... In most instances, fantasy ultimately returns us to our own now re-enchanted world, reminding us that it is neither prosaic nor meaningless, and that how we live and what we do truly matters.

I have now and again tried to imagine the perfect environment, the ideal conditions for reading: A worn leather armchair on a rainy night? A hammock in a freshly mown backyard? A verandah overlooking the summer sea? Good choices, every one. But I have no doubt that they are all merely displacements, sentimental attempts to replicate the warmth and snugness of my mother's lap.

I also think of some books as my friends and i like to have them around. They brighten my life.

Some of us, alas, are destined to find our escapes in novels, not life.

Fiction is a house with many stately mansions, but also one in which it is wise, at least sometimes, to swing from the chandeliers.

It's time for me to challenge my imagination and to begin the process of shaping an entirely new life. And the best way to do that anywhere in this whole wide opportunity-filled world is to create an exciting new business.

In other words, pretend that you are going to franchise your business. (Note: I said pretend. I'm not saying that you should. That isn't the point here—unless, of course, you want it to be.)

Entrepreneurship is, first of all, the power to create.

There are many kinds of delusion.

Once someone dreams a dream, it can't just drop out of existence. But if the dreamer can't remember it, what becomes of it?

There were doors that looked like large keyholes, others that resembled the entrances to caves, there were golden doors, some were padded and some were studded with nails, some were paper-thin and others as thick as the doors of treasure houses; there was one that looked like a giant's mouth and another that had to be opened like a drawbridge, one that suggested a big ear and one that was made of gingerbread, one that was shaped like an oven door, and one that had to be unbuttoned.

All the games were selected for them by supervisors and had to have some useful, educational purpose. The children learned these new games but unlearned something else in the process: they forgot to be happy, how to take pleasure in little things and last, but not least, how to dream

He had never been willing to believe that life had to be as gray and dull as people claimed. He heard them saying: "Life is like that," but he couldn't agree. He never stopped believing in mysteries and miracles.

The human world is full of weak-minded people, who think they're as clever as can be and are convinced that it's terribly important to persuade even the children that Fanstastica doesn't exist.

Bastian] didn't like books in which dull, cranky writers describe humdrum events in the very humdrum lives of humdrum people. Reality gave him enough of that kind of thing, why should he read about it? Besides, he couldn't stand when a writer tried to convince him of something. And these humdrum books, it seemed to him, were always trying to do just that.

Questo, ecco, proprio questo era ciò che lui aveva sognato tanto spesso e che sempre aveva desiderato da quando era caduto in preda alla sua passione: una storia che non dovesse mai avere fine. Il libro di tutti i libri.

There are people who can never go to Fantastica, said Mr. Coreander, and others who can, but who stay there forever. And there are just a few who fo to fantastica and come back. Like you. And they make both world well again.

Now, for the first time ever, a story had escaped his control. It had taken on a life of its own, and all the imagination in the world would be insufficient to halt it. He felt numb.