Quotes About Imagination

He always tell what it will be like someday. Well, a man's mind can't stay in time the way his body does.

And in his dream, Coyotito was reading from a book as large as a house, with letters as big as dogs, and the words galloped and played on the book.

Henri the painter was not French and his name was not Henri. Also he was not really a painter. Henri has so steeped himself in stories of the Left Bank in Paris that he lived there although he had never been there.

The reverse is also true: many a trip continues long after movement in time and space has ceased. I remember a man in Salinas who in his middle years traveled to Honolulu and back, and that journey continued for the rest of his life. We could watch him in his rocking chair on his front porch, his eyes squinted, half-closed, traveling to Honolulu.

If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another.

They called him a comical genius and carried his stories carefully home, and they wondered at how the stories spilled out on the way, for they never sounded the same repeated in their own kitchens.

Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased. I remember a man in Salinas who in his middle years traveled to Honolulu and back, and that journey continued for the rest of his life. We could watch him in his rocking chair on his front porch, his eyes squinted, half-closed, endlessly traveling to Honolulu.

Curious how a place unvisited can take such hold on the mind so that the very name sets up a ringing.

He's got a can up there,' Richard said.

Perhaps that might be the way to write this book--to open the page and to let the stories crawl in by themselves.

You are a little boy. You want the moon to drink from as a golden cup; and so, it is very likely that you will become a great man -- if only you remain a little child. All the world'sgreat have been little boys who wanted the moon; running and climbing, they sometimes catch a firefly. But if one grow to a man's mind, that mind must see that it cannot have the moon and would not want it if it could -- and so, it catches no fireflies.' [Merlin]

Bring new eyes to a world even new lenses and presto, new world.

He has come to be the great man he thought he wanted to be. If this is true, then he is not a man. He is still a little boy and wants the moon.

A writer of stories is a liar.

When the radio was on, music has stimulated memory of times and places, complete with characters and stage sets, memories so exact that every word of dialogue is recreated. And I have projected future scenes, just as complete and convincing--scenes that will never take place. I've written short stories in my mind, chuckling at my own humor, saddened or stimulated by structure or content.

Your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person – a real person you know, or an imagined person – and write to that one.

The design of a book is the pattern of a reality controlled and shaped by the mind of a writer.

I like a lot of talk in a book and I don't like to have nobody tell me what the guy that's talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks

My friend Jack Wagner has often, in Mexico, assumed this state of being. Let us say we wanted to walk in the streets of Mexico ity but not at random. We would choose some article almost certain not to exist there and then diligently try to find it.

But Tom got into a book, crawled and groveled between the covers, tunneled like a mole among the thoughts, and came up with the book all over his face and hands.

A nation may be moved by its statesmen and defined by its military but it's usually remembered for its artists.

Ad astra per alia porci (to the stars on the wings of a pig)

Samuel rode lightly on top of a book and he balanced happily among ideas the way a man rides white rapids in a canoe. But Tom got into a book, crawled and groveled between the covers, tunneled like a mole among the thoughts, and came up with the book all over his face and hands.

Why are you making no more songs?' I said to him in a tone like that. 'Why are you making no more songs?' 'I have grown to be a man. Only children make songs -- children and idiots.