Quotes About Imagination

Stories are invented as you go along...

It might have been a single day; it might have been a week; from his dreams, it could have been months.

Rigorous extrapolation, a gosh-wow love of gadgets, and mystical adventures in strange and mysterious places; every major stream in speculative fiction today can be traced back to authors who were writing before the publishing categories existed. From among the readers in the twenties and thirties who loved any or all of these authors arose the first generation of science fiction writers, who knew themselves to be continuing in a trail that had been blazed by giants.

What we've done is make the categories of science fiction and fantasy larger, freer, and more inclusive than any other genre of contemporary literature. We have room for everybody, and we are extraordinarily open to genuine experimentation.

The novelty and freshness you'll bring to the field won't come from the new ideas you think up. Truly new ideas are rare, and usually turn out to be variations on old themes anyway. No, your freshness will come from the way you think, from the person you are; it will inevitably show up in your writing, provided you don't mask it with heavy-handed formulas or clichés.

As he thought of it, though, he could not imagine what just living might actually be. He had never done it in his life. But he wanted to do it anyway.

Little children gladly accept even the strangest stories that others tell them, because they lack either the context or the confidence to doubt.

I would follow such beauty, said something inside Ender. I would see as those eyes see.

Like Santa Claus. You adults pretend he doesn't exist, but we know that he really does.

The difference between science fiction and fantasy…is simply this, science fiction has rivets, fantasy has trees.

I believe, when it comes to storytelling ... that mistakes are often the beginning of the best ideas. After all, a mistake wasn't planned. It can't be a cliché. All you have to do is think of a reason why the mistake isn't a mistake at all, and you might have something fresh and wonderful, something to stimulate a story you never thought of quite that way before.

Who but the adolescent is free to have the adventures that most of us are looking for when we turn to storytellers to satisfy our hunger?

I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not "true" because we're hungry for another kind of truth: The mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all: our own self-story. Fiction, because it is not about somebody who actually lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about ourself.

And it's true, thought Valentine. I'm not the same person, really, from book to book, because each world changes who I am, even as I write down the story of the world. And this world most of all.

I firmly believe that a good storyteller's education never ends, because to tell stories perfectly you have to know everything about everything. Naturally, none of us actually achieve such complete knowledge - but we should live as if we were trying to do so. You can't afford to close off any area of inquiry.

Until you have examined and comprehended the world around you, you can't possibly create a complex and believable imaginary world.

Orson Scott Card

Danny North grew up surrounded by fairies, ghosts, talking animals, living stones, walking trees, and gods who called up wind and brought down rain, made fire from air and drew iron out of the depths of the earth as easily as ordinary people might draw up water from a well.

Mas nesse momento, sua cabeça inclinada para trás, as folhas verdes e macias se movendo gentilmente na brisa quase imperceptível, sentiu um poderoso déjà-vu. Ele havia olhado para essas folhas antes. Recentemente. Mas isso era impossível. Não havia árvores grandes em Trondheim, e nenhuma crescia dentro do complexo de Milagre. Por que a luz do sol varando as folhas parecia-lhe tão familiar?

Orson Scott Card

Jane first found herself between the stars, her thoughts playing among the vibrations of the philotic strands of the ansible net.

He dreamed, as human beings always dream—random firings of memory and imagination that the unconscious mind tries to put together into coherent stories. Bean rarely paid attention to his own dreams, rarely even remembered that he dreamed at all. But

Todo es una ficción, de todas formas. Hacemos lo que hacemos y luego inventamos las razones, pero nunca son las razones verdaderas. La verdad está siempre fuera de nuestro alcance.

They feel very stupid and strange, the things going through your mind. You're making us very tired, with all your thinking of stupid imaginary impossible things.