Quotes About Imagination

We're living in science fiction, but we don't realize it.

I think it is just a matter of getting into the mind of the writer," Vetinari went on, looking at a letter covered with grubby fingerprints and what looked like the remains of someone's breakfast. He added: "In some cases, I imagine, there is a lot of room.

A unicorn is nothing more than a big horse that comes to a point, anyway. Nothing to get so excited about.

There were actual people in the world whose idea of heaven would be a chocolate cat.

And he read Principles of Accounting all morning, but just to make it interesting, he put lots of dragons in it.

We spray our fantasies on the landscape like a dog sprays urine. It turns it into ours. Once we've invented our gods and demons, we can propitiate or exorcize them. Once we've put fairies in the sinister solitary thorn tree, we can decide where we stand in relation to it; we can hang ribbons on it, see visions under it—or bulldoze it up and call ourselves free of superstition.

Of course fantasy is escapist. Most stories are. So what? Teachers are not meant to be jailers.

If it came to that, the book never gave you the evidence of anything. It talked about "a handsome prince"…was he really, or was it just because he was a prince that people called him handsome? As for "a girl who was as beautiful as the day was long"…well, which day? In midwinter it hardly ever got light! The stories didn't want you to think, they just wanted you to believe what you were told

Thus proving that dreams that come true are not always the right dreams. Does wearing a glass slipper lead to a comfortable life? If everything you touch turns into marshmallows, won't that make things a bit . . . sticky?

You know, I never imagined there were he-dryads. Not even in an oak tree. One of the giants grinned at him. Druellae snorted. Stupid! Where do you think acorns come from?

In fact no gods anywhere play chess. They haven't got the imagination. Gods prefer simple, vicious games, where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight To Oblivion; a key to the understanding of all religion is that a god's idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs.

The gods, he said. Imprisoned in a thought. And perhaps they were never more than a dream.

She was never likely to say out loud, "I wish that I could marry a handsome prince," but knowing that if you did you'd probably open the door to find a stunned prince, a tied-up priest, and a Nac Mac Feegle grinning cheerfully and ready to act as best man definitely made you watch what you said.

She is standing just behind you. Just behind your right shoulder. In the silence of the woods, Polly turned. I can't see her, she said. I am happy for you, said Wazzer, handing her the empty mug. But I didn't see anything, said Polly. No, said Wazzer. But you turned around...

Whatever you choose, your choice will mean there are two new worlds. And perhaps sometimes, on the edge of sleep, we will see the shadow of the other world. There will be no unhappy memories.

REMIND ME AGAIN, he said, HOW THE LITTLE HORSE-SHAPED ONES MOVE.

most people don't set foot outside their own heads much.

But all them things exist, said Nanny Ogg. That's no call to go around believing in them. It only encourages 'em.

Fairyland, where dreams can hurt. Somewhere all stories are real, all songs are true. I thought that was a strange thing for the kelda to say. . . .

HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE. Or, from the very next page, YOU NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?

You don't understand!" screamed the tourist, above the terrible noise of the wingbeats. "All my life I've wanted to see dragons!" "From the inside?" shouted Rincewind. "Shut up and ride!

It was no use getting angry with Wullie; he lived in a Wullie-shaped world of his own. You had to think diagonally.

And he dreamed the dream of all those who publish books, which was to have so much gold in your pockets that you would have to employ two people just to hold your trousers up.

He famously defended fairy stories against those who said they told children that there were monsters; children already know that there are monsters, he said, and fairy stories teach them that monsters can be killed. We now know that the monsters may not simply have scales and sleep under a mountain. They may be in our own heads.