Quotes About Imagination

like an opium addict squatting in the middle of a frenetic downtown street, blowing a reed of sweet smoke out between his teeth, staring into some ancient dream that all the bustling pedestrians had banished to unfrequented parts of their minds.

Neal Stephenson

He no longer had an accurate visual memory of the size of the moon in the sky, and so he could not estimate how many times larger the cloud was.

Neal Stephenson

There's a good-sized shantytown of hardcore Third World unemployables, plus a scattering of schizophrenic first worlders who have long ago burned their brains to ash in the radiant heat of their own imaginings.

black chariot of pepperoni fire.

Your avatar can look any way you want it to, up to the limitations of your equipment. If you're ugly, you can make your avatar beautiful. If you've just gotten out of bed, your avatar can still be wearing beautiful clothes and professionally applied makeup. You can look like a gorilla or a dragon or a giant talking penis in the Metaverse. Spend five minutes walking down the Street and you will see all of these.

Classics-based sci-fi is nothing new. To name the most recent of many examples, the novelist Dan Simmons published "Ilium" and "Olympos," science-fictional takes on Homer. When

scattering of schizophrenic first worlders who have long ago burned their brains to ash in the radiant heat of their own imaginings.

An idea springs out of his forehead fully formed, with no warning. This is how all the best ideas arrive.

She slammed the book closed, ran to her bed, gathered her stuffed animals up in her arms, started chewing on her blanket, and cried for a while, considering the question of trolls.

You know, now, the decision I made. Which was to suffer for the greater good. Because society will go astray if there are not those who, like me, imagine many outcomes. Let those scenarios run rampant in their minds. Anticipate the worst that could happen. Take steps to prevent it. If the price of that—the price of having a head full of dark imaginings—is personal suffering, then so be it.

Neal Stephenson

which is that storytellers are doing a kind of low-level magic. Their "superpower" isn't imagining counterfactuals, but rather seeing across parallel Strands and perceiving things that actually did (or might) happen in alternate versions of reality.

Neal Stephenson

nothing was worse than getting stuck in a situation like that with nothing to read. Elsewhere

In fact, I would probably sound like a seventeenth-century alchemist or something.

Neal Stephenson

The stuff was tremendous, like drinking your favorite book.

Neal Stephenson

Neal Stephenson

summary to me. I thought you couldn't summarize.

Neal Stephenson

We are technocrats. We make decisions like engineers. Which doesn't always line up with what people imagine they want.