Quotes About Imagination

It was hard to separate the fact from the fiction...

Later, as I got to know her, I'd realize that when she gardens, she never sees the seed. She is already picturing the plant it will become.

Sometimes, when I would share a memory of a meal, I noticed the others listening. "It's because you don't just tell stories," Darija explained. "You paint with words.

JUST SO YOU KNOW, WHEN THEY SAY "ONCE UPON a time"… they're lying. It's not once upon a time. It's not even twice upon a time. It's hundreds of times, over and over, every time someone opens up the pages of this dusty old book.

When I was little I used to read the obituaries and one day I asked my mother why people die in alphabetical order.

Babies are such blank slates. They don't come into this world with the assumptions their parents have made, or the promises their church will give, or the ability to sort people into groups they like and don't like.

when you held one of those volumes in your hands you were leafing through another person's life. Someone else had once loved that story, too. Someone else had carried that book in a backpack, devoured it over breakfast, mopped up that coffee stain at a Paris café, cried herself to sleep after the last chapter. The scent of their store was distinctive: a slight damp mildew, a pinch of dust. To me, it was the smell of history.

the breeze would draw a violin bow across the branches of a tree and I would again hear her lullaby. I would listen to the chime of coins being counted, and I would imagine her laughter. Her voice was caught in the shell of my ear, as if it were the ocean.

I have this math teacher, Mr. Allen. He said that when you're a point, all you see is the point. When you're a line, all you see is the line and the point. When you're in three dimensions, you see three dimensions and lines and points. Just because we can't see a fourth dimension doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It just means we haven't reached it yet.

It's because you don't just tell stories," Darija explained. "You paint with words.

Driving home, I am struck by the sudden thought that the world is inflatable, trees and grass and houses ready to collapse with the single prick of a pin. I have the sense that if I veer the car to the left, smash through the picket fence and the little Tykes playground, it will bounce us back like a rubber bumper.

Maybe there are entire worlds where there are no fences, where feeling bears you like a tide.

Did you ever wonder who you would have been, if you hadn't become who you are?

believed in all sorts of mythical creatures: pixies, dragons, werewolves, honest men.

Fiction is like that, once it is released into the world: contagious, persistent.

When I was four years old, I kept telling my mother that the little boy in our house was stealing things.

You may think there's nothing very interesting about seeing someone sleep, but that probably means you've never found the girl of your dreams.

A story danced in his head as he walked through the dried buffalo grass of winter. The stiff stalks made a swishing sound, like a brush lightly moving over a drum. His imagination was all the escape he needed most days. He was leaving his world, his reality, his home, if only for an hour. If only in his mind.

Appeals to the Young and the Young at Heart.

Think of it as a parallel universe. But maybe it's the real one, and we're in a dream.

He had a moustache-and-beard combination that looked like a skinny white caterpillar taking a lap around his mouth.

Maybe all the schemes of the devil were nothing compared to what man could think up.

Fantasy was always only a reality waiting to be switched on.

The difference between childhood and adulthood, Vic had come to believe, was the difference between imagination and resignation. You traded one for the other and lost your way.