Quotes About Imagination

I wrote my first play when I was nine, it was about Robin Hood, from Maid Marian's point of view. I was a feminist from day one.

I wanted to be a cowgirl... But, you know, it was pointed out to me that, you know, growing up in Brooklyn, there wasn't much opportunity... for cowgirlery.

I was reading C.S. Lewis with my mom, and she was pointing out that he was dead, and I'm like, 'What do you mean he's dead?' We were in this world he created, and he was gone from the Earth. Yet in those black marks on a white page, his imagination lived on, his voice lived on. That is so miraculous.

In Judaism or Christianity and so forth, you invent rules that don't exist anywhere except in your imagination. You spend your life trying to gain points and to avoid all kinds of things that detract from your points. And if by the time you die you gather enough points, then you pass on to the next level, in Heaven.

Although when I start a novel I know how it will begin and end, I like to let the people within the story take me on a journey between those points without having a fixed plan.

I know what I want to achieve in each book and the major points, but I don't plan right down to the chapters. I think that the characters write themselves in some degree.

I think of fiction as the highest calling. I'm kind of addicted to it. It's the thing that has gotten me through all the hard points in my life.

I say I write extrapolations. I look at data points and ask what the world could look like.

When a story or part of a story comes to me, I turn it over in my mind a long time before starting to write. I might make notes or take long drives or who knows what. By the time I give myself permission to write, I know certain things, though not everything. I know where the story is headed, and I know certain crucial points along the way.

A lot of my favourite books - I should say, not much happens in the books! It's much more about the points of view of the author more than anything else.

I learned to write from different points of view and not just something I would say.

I never believe it when people claim they knew they wanted to be actors when they were 4 or 5 years old. I think that's rubbish. When you're that age, you just like showing off.

There is a bearing which comes from having a little bit of something withheld. In acting classes, they always say don't reveal 100 percent: it's much more interesting.

Not everyone can say, 'I'm going to write a classic today.' If that was the case, we'd all be doing it.

I don't play classical guitar. But I do in my mind. I've got it on a stand.

I was raised on the classics - Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and others.

Bring in the bottled lightning, a clean tumbler, and a corkscrew.

And every friend I've got has been writing Mars stories. It was pretty clear I'd never catch up.

You could make a film out of just about anything so long as there is a clear vision about the story.

I think it's such a clever idea, that you fall in love when you're 16, and then you have this fantasy about that person for the rest of your life.

'Once Upon A Time In America' is one of the cleverest films of all time, because you can get out of it whatever you want to get out of it.

What Einstein was able to do was - to use a cliche - think out of the box.

This is a cliche, but in fiction, I feel it is easier for me to get to some sort of truth, some kind of more honest writing.

Most artists try to avoid cliches, but it's pretty hard to avoid them if you yourself end up being one.