Quotes About Imagination

In Ronald Reagan's chaotic childhood, the imagination was armor. There is nothing unusual about that; transcending the doubts, hesitations, and fears swirling around you by casting yourself internally as the hero of your own adventure story is a characteristic psychic defense mechanism of the Boy Who Disappears.

In 'Me Before You,' the two characters popped into my head fully formed, which is really strange and unusual. Other books, I sit on them for two or three months. I have a whole routine: I buy a nice book; I hand-write all their characteristics. I put them through little tests just to see how they would react to things.

What I taught myself was that in any problem you get, you've got to come up with an innovative, brilliant, kind of unusual, stunning solution.

My goal is to get people to really believe that the impossible is real, and not that I'm responsible for it. I want them to believe that they're having the most unusual, magical and bizarre days of their lives.

I imagine I'm a very unusual guy to date. You know, I've got toys on the shelves, and I've got the cars.

Getting the ideas are a struggle for me. I'm doing better now that I use the concentration tapes. More unusual ideas.

The idea for any film is always going to be surprising or unusual.

Whenever I was encouraged by my elders to pick up a book, I was often told, 'Read so as to know the world.' And it is true; books have invited me into different countries, states of mind, social conditions and historical epochs; they have offered me a place at the most unusual gatherings.

Growing up, I loved to play. Writing was a natural outtake of play. I realize now, having kids, that maybe that's unusual. Living out in the middle of nowhere, I entertained myself by writing.

It's very unusual to be playing something other than human.

A woman wants to be romanced. She wants to be an essential part of a great adventure; she wants a beauty to unveil. That is what little girls play at, and those are the movies women love and the stories that they love.

The only thing that infuriates me is that I have more unwritten stories in me than I can conceivably write in a lifetime.

You're dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway.

Drag me to the moon, to catch a star and seize its brilliance as I'm swept up in amorphous dust.

Sculpture is something you bump into when you back up to look at a painting.

All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.

When I was a boy, I always saw myself as a hero in comic books and in movies. I grew up believing this dream.

If your agent or publisher is jumping up and down at the thought of your novel, it's because they're picturing the movie poster on the side of the bus.

The one sound I think of when I think about dreaming is the harp glissando, which is this really atmospheric run up and down the scale that's really dreamy.

We'd be working in our motel room through the night, and I'd come up with an idea at two in the morning, and he'd start jumping up and down, pacing across the room, or whatever.

All I did as a child was pretend to be James Bond or Marlon Brando. When I was about four, I put on my dad's work boots and went up and down the street with his walking stick pretending to be Charlie Chaplin.

Storytelling was a way to see the world bigger than the one you were looking at, and that had great appeal for me. I think, since that was part of my upbringing, it became part of me, and I wanted to pass it along to my kids and my grandkids.

I have fond memories of all things Henson. I grew up on the stuff. My mom's a massive fan and made sure it was a part of my upbringing.

When you start a novel, it is always like pushing a boulder uphill. Then, after a while, to mangle the metaphor, the boulder fills with helium and becomes a balloon that carries you the rest of the way to the top. You just have to hold your nerve and trust to narrative.