Quotes About Imagination

The single best thing you can do for the world. It occurs to her: The problem begins with that word world. It means two such opposite things. The real one we cannot see. The invented one we can't escape.

Whole new rooms open up in Adam's brain, ready to be furnished.

Someone who doesn't even know she's been invented, staying game in the face of the inescapable plot.

he reads the same paragraph a dozen times; the words turn into twirling things, like winged seeds spinning in the air.

He loved the benevolence that the stacks held out, their map of the known world. He loved the all-you-can-eat buffet of borrowing. He loved the lending histories stamped into the front of each book, the record of strangers who checked them out before him. The library was the best dungeon crawl imaginable: free loot for the finding, combined with the joy of leveling up.

nutmeg's inverted spade, gnarled baja elephant

You have given me a thing I could never have imagined, before I knew you. It's like I had the word "book," and you put one in my hands. I had the word "game," and you taught me how to play. I had the word "life," and then you came along and said, "Oh! You mean this.

A chemical semaphore passes through Nick's brain: Suppose a person had sculpted any one of these, just as they stand. That single work would be a landmark of human art.

Every man should be capable of all ideas, and I believe in the future he shall be.

THEY SHARE A LOT, ASTRONOMY AND CHILDHOOD. Both are voyages across huge distances. Both search for facts beyond their grasp. Both theorize wildly and let possibilities multiply without limits. Both are humbled every few weeks. Both operate out of ignorance. Both are mystified by time. Both are forever starting out. For

You can travel everywhere, just by standing still.

All of art is childish, all storytelling, all human hope and fear.

People want a better story than they get." The wild-haired sadhu leans forward so fast he almost pitches out of his wheelchair. "Yes! And what do all good stories do?" There are no takers. Neelay holds up his arms and extends his palms in the oddest gesture. In another moment, leaves will grow from his fingers. Birds will come and nest in them. "They kill you a little. They turn you into something you weren't.

The library was the best dungeon crawl imaginable: free loot for the finding, combined with the joy of leveling up.

The single best thing you can do for the world. It occurs to her: the problem begins with that word world. It means two such opposite things. The real one we cannot see. The invented one we can't escape. She lifts the glass and hears her father read out loud: Let me sing to you now, about how people turn into other things.

Two barred owls traded their call-and-response: Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all? Who would ever cook for this boy, aside from me? I couldn't imagine Robin toughening up enough to survive this Ponzi scheme of a planet. Maybe I didn't want him to. I liked him otherworldly.

Quando rientrai in ufficio, l'immagine della donna che sale per le scale era diventata, a furia di riproiettarmela nella mente, una di quelle repliche di spettacoli in seconda serata di cui vorresti vedere una versione restaurata (p. 310)

collected minerals and at ten years of age wrote poems but still played with blocks.

the process of writing is always a healing process because the function of creation is always, always, the alleviation of pain—the writer's, first of all, and then the pain of those who read what she has written. Imagination is compassionate. Writing is a form of making, and making humanizes the world.1

In scientific work, creative thinking demands seeing things not seen previously, or in ways not previously imagined; and this necessitates jumping off from "normal" positions, and taking risks by departing from reality.

a normal adult never stops to think about problems of space and time. These are things which he has thought of as a child.

The sweetest sounds I'll ever hear are still inside my head.

Science is now giving us a very helpful language for what religion rightly intuited and imaged, albeit in mythological language. Remember, myth does not mean "not true," which is the common misunderstanding; it actually refers to things that are always true!

imagination without energy remains inert...