Quotes About Imagination

Poetry makes nothing happen.

A daydream is a meal at which images are eaten. Some of us are gourmets, some gourmands, and a good many take their images precooked out of a can and swallow them down whole, absent-mindedly and with little relish.

no poet can know what his poem is going to be like until he has written it.

No poet or novelist wishes he was the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number believe their wish has been granted.

So I wish you first a Sense of theatre; only Those who love illusion And know it will go far: Otherwise we spend our Lives in a confusion Of what we say and do with Who we really are.

A fairy tale...on the other hand, demands of the reader total surrender; so long as he is in its world, there must be for him no other.

Every man carries within him through life a mirror, as unique and impossible to get rid of as his shadow. A parlor game for a wet afternoon – imaging the mirrors of one's friends. A has a huge pier glass, gilded and baroque, B a discreet little pocket mirror in a pigskin case with his initials stamped on the back; whenever one looks at C, he is in the act of throwing his mirror away but, if one looks in his pocket or up his sleeve, one always finds another, like an extra ace.

When I try to imagine a faultless love Or the life to come, what I hear is the murmur Of underground streams, what I see is a limestone landscape.

but when I try to imagine a faultless love, Or the life to come, what I hear is the murmur Of underground streams, what I see is a limestone landscape.

A poet […] may talk nonsense, but it will probably be interesting nonsense.

Life is fleeting and full of sorrow and no words can prevent the brave and the beautiful from dying or annihilate a grief. What poetry can do is transform the real world into an imaginary one which is godlike in its permanence and beauty, providing a picture of life which is worthy of imitation as far as it is possible.

Look into my eyes, and you will see me there--all, all that is in my heart.' 'Oh, I know what I should see there!'...'What would you see? Tell me?' 'There is a little black ball in the middle of your eye; I should see myself in it no bigger than that,' and she marked off about an eighth of her little finger-nail. 'There is a pool in the wood, and I look down and see myself there. That is better. Just as large as I am--not small and black like a small, small fly.

Writers are magicians. They write down words, and, if they're good, you believe that what they write is real, just as you believe a good magician has pulled the coins out of your ear, or made his assistant disappear.

Writers are magicians. They write down words, and, if they're good, you believe that what they write is real, just as you believe a good magician has pulled the coins out of your ear, or made his assistant disappear. But the words on the page have no connection to the person who wrote them. Writers live other peoples' lives for them.

I dream of things that never were

Writers are magicians. They write down words, and, if they're good, you believe that what they write is real, just as you believe a good magician has pulled the coins out of your ear, or made his assistant disappear. But the words on the page have no connection to the person who wrote them. Writers live other peoples' lives for them. I don't write autobiography.

When I was me I remembered I could remember what was not there but may have been there once

My cradle was a shoe.

To Paula in Late Spring" Let me imagine that we will come again when we want to and it will be spring we will be no older than we ever were the worn griefs will have eased like the early cloud through which the morning slowly comes to itself and the ancient defenses against the dead will be done with and left to the dead at last the light will be as it is now in the garden that we have made here these years together of our long evenings and astonishment

Poetry is a way of looking at the world for the first time.

By happy chance we saw A twofold image: on a grassy bank A snow-white ram, and in the crystal flood Another and the same!

When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance.

I throw down the gauntlet to chance. For example, I prepare the ground for a picture by cleaning my brush over the canvas. Spilling a little turpentine can also be helpful.

If the poem has no obvious destination, there's a chance that we'll be all setting off on an interesting ride.