Quotes About Imagination

Necessity starves on the stoop of invention.

Perhaps no person can be a poet, or even can enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.

Create a world in which these things do or do not exist, or in which they are extended in some way. Test reality against this fiction. The reader will recognize the world that you're talking about, even though it may be another one altogether

We are now in a position to determine just what sort of science fiction story this really is.

Sitting there most of the night, she said, I had a crazy kind of image. Do you think two sick twisted 'trees ever made bonsai out of one another?

What are we to do with Sturgeon's frequently quoted assertion, "All my work is about love"? Well, I take the assertion seriously—but in the manner that I take seriously the innumerable strategies devised over the centuries by innumerable artists to reach into the centers of their own creativity. Such a statement may well represent Sturgeon's own key to working. But there is no necessity for it to be my key into the work.

Ask the next question, and the one that follows that, and the one that follows that. It's the symbol of everything humanity has ever created, and is the reason it has been created.

Understand, I was a bright and profoundly unimaginative child: Much of what passes for intelligence in children is a stark deafness to metaphor coupled with a pigheaded literal-mindedness.

And though they clamor endlessly to ask, "Where do you get your ideas?" (a question I have never heard any SF writer worth her or his salt seriously try to answer), the question, "How do you put these ideas together?" (which, with a little thought and analysis, is sometimes answerable) is much rarer.

Inner space is so much more interesting, because outer space is so empty.

The people who wrote down the Bible and the people who wrote down the Mahayana sutras were artists. They used images to express their insights.

If you are a poet, you will clearly see a cloud floating on this sheet of paper. Thich Nhat Hanh

In 'Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell,' I wanted to create the most convincing story of magic and magicians that I could.

My grandmother took me to a play, and... there was a little girl on stage. And as soon as I saw her on stage, I thought, 'This is my job'... I was probably, like, 7 or 8. I was very young... It was 'Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat'.

I'm one of those people who keep a dream journal.

My mom bought me an 'Anne of Green Gables' journal. And I just remember thinking it was so cool, and I could write anything in it.

When I'm between projects, I keep a journal I call a 'thought log,' and it's my practice to write down whatever interests me.

I keep a journal, like many writers do. It helps in writing a story, as you can use an incident from the journal and put in your story.

I was always writing on something: short stories and journal entries of what had happened that day, always thinking about something to write down.

I think you can do a lot with fiction, and in some cases you can say even more in fiction than you can in straight-up documentary journalism.

In journalism I can only tell what happened. In fiction, I can show it.

It turned out I really didn't like journalism. I wanted to make up stories, not cover real events.

Art is not journalism. In art, you don't make it to convey a message.

I was never a good journalist, because I would make things up. A lot of people frowned on that, which is why I ended up in fiction.