Quotes About Imagination

It puzzles me when writers say they can't read fiction when they're writing fiction because they don't want to be influenced. I'm totally open to useful influence. I'm praying for it.

People all learn things differently, and sometimes imagination isn't considered as useful a tool as it can be in the learning process - especially in school in subjects like math and science.

I consider it useless and tedious to represent what exists, because nothing that exists satisfies me. Nature is ugly, and I prefer the monsters of my fancy to what is positively trivial.

Follow your image as far as you can no matter how useless you think it is. Push yourself.

I can't imagine ever writing anything of any kind on a machine. I never tried to write either poetry or prose on a typewriter. I like to do it on useless paper, scrap paper, because it's of no importance.

I had been a reporter for 15 years when I set out to write my first novel. I knew how to research an article or profile a subject - skills that I assumed would be useless when it came to fiction. It was from my imagination that the characters in my story would emerge.

I know what it's like to be in one place and dream of another. I also know what it's like to feel that nostalgia is a fairly useless thing because it is stasis.

How can a doctor judge a woman's sanity by merely bidding her good morning and refusing to hear her pleas for release? Even the sick ones know it is useless to say anything, for the answer will be that it is their imagination.

I'm useless at staring at a piece of white paper. But if you put a piece of white paper with a black line on it in front of me, I'll say no that black line should be red and it should go this way or that way.

Stories are the only thing that I can be bothered with. It's the only way that I can do anything, even if I'm quite useless. It's the only area in being human where I could be a little useful.

Society may shun bohemia, may put it down, may consider it useless and ineffective, but it is where everything cooks and boils and is created.

To me, the goal of building useless and ridiculous robots is more - I mean, in some way, it's like a personal goal because I think it's really fun, and I think having fun is super important to create things.

I found it was way more fun to build useless stuff.

Most photo apps before asked something of the users. They said, 'You produce, act, and perform.' 'Instagram' said, 'Let us take care of the secret sauce.'

As you see, I do not treat the creation of fiction, that to say the invention and development of fantasies, as a form of abstract thought. I don't wish to deny the uses of the intellect, but sometimes one has the intuition that the intellect by itself will lead one nowhere.

There is no more reason why the features belonging to a picture should be distorted for the purpose of such imaginative suggestion than that the poet's metaphors should spoil his words for the ordinary uses of man.

'Realistic' is a loaded word for me. Anyone who uses the word 'realistic' is all bad.

Listening to music and lyrics and watching movies, I think, uses a lot of the same muscles we use in reading and experiencing poetry - and yet we somehow forget that we have those when it comes to sitting down with a book of poems.

One of the things I love so much about horror is the way it uses surprise, and when I write, it's about: What have we not seen before? What's going to surprise us? If we're not going beyond, taking that challenge, I get kind of bored.

I'm really just using the mirror to summon something I don't even know until I see it.

Interestingly, 'October Sky' is an anagram of 'Rocket Boys', the same letters just moved around. This was discovered by director Joe Johnston using an anagram program on his computer.

I think science fiction helps us think about possibilities, to speculate - it helps us look at our society from a different perspective. It lets us look at our mores, using science as the backdrop, as the game changer.

Humans are distinguished from other species by a massive brain that enables us to imagine a future and influence it by what we do in the present. By using experience, knowledge and insight, our ancestors recognized they could anticipate dangers and opportunities and take steps to exploit advantages and avoid hazards.

On occasion I have drawn as a release from painting. The economy in using paper, pencil, charcoal and crayon can help towards a greater gamble and higher rewards. I also find that drawing can generate ideas more rapidly than painting.