Quotes About Imagination

In the stories we tell ourselves, we tell ourselves.

Someone once asked me what I thought horror fiction did. What its purpose was . . . I replied that when I wrote horror fiction, I tried to take the improbable, the unimaginable, and the impossible, and make it seem not only possible--but inevitable.

To the little girl the house seemed a gigantic head, and she only a morsel of meat conveniently positioned in its gaping mouth. The front porch was that grinning mouth, the white porch railing its lower teeth, the ornamental wooden frieze above its upper teeth, the painted wicker chair on which she perched its green wagging tongue. Frances sat and rocked and wondered when the jaws would clamp shut.

In these dark and uncertain times, there can be great value in imagining a bit of star in each human soul. Not just that it gives some hope for humanity at a time when man's inhumanity to man seems ever on the increase; but also because it points to an inner brightness that can light the way in dark times.

Mythic imagination can break the spell of time and open us to a level of life that remains timeless. Myth is not about what happened in past times; myth is about what happens to people all of the time.

The hardest thing in life may be to learn to truly trust that there is something noble and generative in ourselves. This is a greater sense of the notion of believing in our self; to truly believe in oneself means to uncover the inner core of imagination and authenticity that can also be called the genius within us. When we connect to the inner resident of the soul, we also learn how we are woven to the Soul of the World.

Creators are joyful and positive. Creators look at "what is" and "what can be" instead of "what is not." Instead of excluding possibilities, creators include all possibilities, both real and imagined. They choose to interpret their own world and do not rely upon the interpretations of others. And most importantly, creators are creative because they believe they are creative.

Instead of presenting a catalog of all known creative techniques and abandoning you to puzzle out which ones actually work, I started with the ideas (fish) and worked backwards to each creator (fisherman). Then I identified the technique that caught the idea.

Set yourself an idea quota for a challenge you are working on, such as five new ideas every day for a week. You'll find the first five are the hardest, but these will quickly trigger other ideas. The more ideas you come up with, the greater your chances of coming up with a winner.

You have to record your own ideas, as, so far as I know, there is no store that sells Cliffs Notes on your past thoughts.

It was one of those dreams from which she woke up depressed about her reality, filled with a longing that pulled at her insides, wishing the dream could have lasted forever, or at least much longer than it had.

One avoids becoming a Tolkien clone precisely by returning to the same roots that inspired The Lord of the Rings.

I think the notion of worldbuilding is a failure of literary sophistication.

On such ventures as these one is inclined to forget much, as one forgets a dream.

Silently descending were three massive apelike creatures, borne on great leathery wings. Shaarilla recognized them and gasped. "Clakars!

There's room for all sorts of magic and miracles in this world - that's what I think.

You must remember," she said, putting a bony hand on mine, "that true stories do not always end as we would wish them to. Would you like to hear the truth of what happened, or shall I make something up for you just to keep you happy?

Michael Morpurgo

We listened agog, because she was a wonderful storyteller. She could paint pictures in your head with words, and she could touch the heart of you too.

Poetry is a sort of truancy, a dream within the dream of life, a wild flower planted among our wheat.

The conjunction of ruling and dreaming generates tyranny.

Education is not acquiring a stock of ready-made ideas, images, sentiments, beliefs and so forth; it is learning to look, to listen, to think, to feel, to imagine, to believe, to understand, to choose and to wish.

Image the whole, then execute the parts— Fancy the fabric Quite, ere you build, ere steel strike fire from quartz Ere mortar dab brick!

If she were a writer she would collect her pencils and notebooks and favourite cat and write in bed. Strangers and lovers would never get past the locked door.