Quotes About Imagination

I used to lie on his bed for an hour before bedtime or on a Saturday afternoon and read to him and then when he graduated to books with chapters sometimes he read. I'd look over at him, at his entire body, which appeared to have grown in the last few minutes; his lips moved and his eyes danced and darted across the page and I'd think: my son can read; he can comprehend things, he is making discoveries and he will soon have even more opinions about the world.

A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.

HUMAN BEINGS MAKE LIFE SO INTERESTING. DO YOU KNOW, THAT IN A UNIVERSE SO FULL OF WONDERS, THEY HAVE MANAGED TO INVENT BOREDOM. (Death)

Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong.

Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.

Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages.

He'd noticed that sex bore some resemblance to cookery: it fascinated people, they sometimes bought books full of complicated recipes and interesting pictures, and sometimes when they were really hungry they created vast banquets in their imagination - but at the end of the day they'd settle quite happily for egg and chips. If it was well done and maybe had a slice of tomato.

Real children do not go hoppity skip unless they are on drugs.

People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it's the other way around.

You can't map a sense of humor. Anyway, what is a fantasy map but a space beyond which There Be Dragons? On the Discworld we know that There Be Dragons Everywhere. They might not all have scales and forked tongues, but they Be Here all right, grinning and jostling and trying to sell you souvenirs.

The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.

Books must be treated with respect, we feel that in our bones, because words have power. Bring enough words together they can bend space and time.

There's always a story. It's all stories, really. The sun coming up every day is a story. Everything's got a story in it. Change the story, change the world.

I'm not the world's greatest expert, but I would have thought that the wizards, witches, trolls, unicorns, ... broomsticks and spells would have given her a clue?' - when J.K. Rowling insisted she wasn't writing fantasy.

Look, he said to his imagination, if this is how you're going to behave, I shan't bring you again.

It is at this point that normal language gives up, and goes and has a drink.

I have no use for people who have learned the limits of the possible.

It's going to look pretty good, then, isn't it, said War testily, the One Horseman and Three Pedestrians of the Apocalypse.

Even a really bad creator would at least have started with Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Surprise.

Hello, inner child, I'm the inner babysitter!

Using a metaphor in front of a man as unimaginative as Ridcully was like a red flag to a bu... was like putting something very annoying in front of someone who was annoyed by it.

It was octarine, the colour of magic. It was alive and glowing and vibrant and it was the undisputed pigment of the imagination, because wherever it appeared it was a sign that mere matter was a servant of the powers of the magical mind. It was enchantment itself. But Rincewind always thought it looked a sort of greenish-purple.

J.R.R. Tolkien has become a sort of mountain, appearing in all subsequent fantasy in the way that Mt. Fuji appears so often in Japanese prints. Sometimes it's big and up close. Sometimes it's a shape on the horizon. Sometimes it's not there at all, which means that the artist either has made a deliberate decision against the mountain, which is interesting in itself, or is in fact standing on Mt. Fuji.

Sometimes words need music too. Sometimes the descriptions are not enough. Books should be written with soundtracks, like films.