Quotes About Imagination

It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass. Yet regardless of where they come from, I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them -- with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself.

He was like a young, undriven, unfalsifying, unvindictive Fay. So Fay might have appeared, just at the beginning, to her aging father, with his slipping eyesight.

Like Phoenix, you work all your life to find your way, through all the obstructions and the false appearances and the upsets you may have brought on yourself, to reach a meaning—using inventions of your imagination, perhaps helped out by your dreams and bits of good luck. And finally too, like Phoenix, you have to assume that what you are working in aid of is life, not death. But you would make the trip anyway—wouldn't you?—just on hope. 1974

What I do in writing of any character is to try to enter into the mind, heart, and skin of a human being who is not myself. Whether this happens to be a man or a woman, old or young, with skin black or white, the primary challenge lies in making the jump itself. It is the act of a writer's imagination that I set most high.

I have been told, both in approval and in accusation, that I seem to love all my characters. What I do in writing of any character is to try to enter into the mind, heart, and skin of a human being who is not myself. Whether this happens to be a man or a woman, old or young, with skin black or white, the primary challenge lies in making the jump itself. It is the act of a writer's imagination that I set most high.

I have always considered imaginative truth to be more profound, more loaded with significance, than every day reality... Everything we dream about, and by that I mean everything we desire, is true (the myth of Icarus came before aviation, and if Ader or Bleriot started flying it is because all men have dreamed of flight). There is nothing truer than myth... Reality does not have to be: it is simply what is.

A writer never takes a vacation. For a writer life consists of either writing or thinking about writing

JEAN: Visezi de-a-mpicioarelea! BERENGER: Dar eu stau jos. JEAN: Jos sau în picioare-i tot aia! BERENGER: Eh. nu... totuÅŸi e-o diferen??! JEAN: Nu-i vorba de asta. BERENGER: P?i tu ai spus c?-i totuna de-i jos sau în picioare... JEAN: Nu m-ai înÅ£eles. Atunci cînd visezi e totuna dac? visezi aÅŸezat sau în picioare!... BERENGER: Ei bine, da, visez... ViaÅ£a e vis...

The Dog and the Cow," an experimental fable. Once upon a time another cow asked another dog: "Why have you not swallowed your trunk?" "Pardon me," replied the dog, "it is because I thought that I was an elephant.

OLD MAN: Make believe yourself, it's your turn. OLD WOMAN: It's your turn. OLD MAN: Your turn. OLD WOMAN: Your turn OLD MAN: Your turn. OLD WOMAN: Your turn.

Eh oui, je rêve...la vie est un rêve.

No book can be appreciated until it has been slept with and dreamed over.

All good and true book-lovers practice the pleasing and improving avocation of reading in bed ... No book can be appreciated until it has been slept with and dreamed over.

Winkin', Blinkin', and Nod, one night sailed off in a wooden shoe; Sailed off on a river of crystal light into a sea of dew. Where are you going and what do you wish? the old moon asked the three. We've come to fish for the herring fish that live in this beautiful sea. Nets of silver and gold have we, said Winkin', Blinkin', and Nod.

And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies Is a wee one's trundle-bed; So shut your eyes while Mother sings Of wonderful sights that be, And you shall see the beautiful things As you rock on the misty sea.

Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes, and Nod is a little head, And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies is a wee one's trundle-bed. So shut your eyes while Mother sings of wonderful sights that be, And you shall see the beautiful things as you rock in the misty sea, Where the old shoe rocked the fishermen three: Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.

What's chivalrous about saying you've seen a rhinoceros?

A writer never has a vacation. For a writer, life consists of either writing, or thinking about writing.

Darn your Barnum and Bailey circus lingo, Big. This isn't a thing to mock at. I should think the origin of man would be something that would appeal even to your hothouse imagination. Modern science believes—knows—that Asia was the first home of the human race. That's where we're going, to the great Central Asian plateau north of the Himalayas.

What's the first thing a kid says when he learns how to talk? 'Tell me a story.' That's how we understand who we are, where we come from. Stories are everything. [179]

But for now I prefer to think that I will go somewhere that is not so overimagined.

T. H. Huxley, the nineteenth-century evolutionary biologist and author of the "infinite monkey theorem." Huxley's theory says that if you provide infinite monkeys with infinite typewriters, some monkey somewhere will eventually create a masterpiece—

Funny how people don't really see each other. Men and women. They invent each other in their minds and then they see what they invent.They don't really see each other. Now she was in love with him and she didn't even know his real name, didn't know anything real about him.

In dreams begin responsibilities," as the poet Yeats said,