Quotes About Imagination

Reading was not an escape for her, any more than it is for me. It was an aspect of direct experience. She distinguished, of course, between the fictional world and the real one, in which she had to prepare dinners and so on. Still, for us, the fictional world was an extension of the real, and in no way a substitute for it, or refuge from it. Any more than sleeping is a substitute for waking." (Jincy Willett)

Arithmetic is the death of story.

Fiction, when it's done right, does in the daylight what dreams do at night: we leave the confines of our own experiences and go to common ground, where for a time we are not alone.

That's the hard work of writing. The imagining.

When it comes to books, I am a sensuous woman.

This is where the pivotal events of my childhood unfolded, while I ate banana and root beer Popsicles, two by two, tucking the sticks neatly under the skirt of the chair. It's where Sunnybank Lad met Lady, Ken met his friend Flicka, Atlanta burned, Manderley burned, Lassie came home, Jim ran away, Alice got small, Wilbur got big, David Copperfield was born, Beth died, and, on an endless gloomy winter afternoon, Jody shot his yearling.

Those golden minutes before you are completely awake, when your mind is just drifting, you have no censorship you are ready to develop any kind of idea. That's when I come up with the best and worst ideas. That is the privilege of being a writer - that you can stay in bed for an hour in the morning and it's work time.

Something is visiting, but it may not be the muse...

It doesn't matter. I have books, new books, and I can bear anything as long as there are books.

I care more about the people in books than the people I see every day.

One of the things I've always liked about science fiction is the way it makes you think about things, and look at things from angles you'd never have thought about before.

The thing about Tolkien, about The Lord of the Rings , is that it's perfect. It's this whole world, this whole process of immersion, this journey. It's not, I'm pretty sure, actually true, but that makes it more amazing, that someone could make it all up. Reading it changes everything.

And there's no sex, hardly any love stuff at all, in Middle Earth, which always made me think, yes, the world would be better off without it.

I am reading The Lord of the Rings . I suddenly wanted to. I almost know it by heart, but I can still sink right into it. I know no other book that is so much like going on a journey. When I put it down to this, I feel as if I am also waiting with Pippin for the echoes of that stone down the well.

This isn't a nice story, and this isn't an easy story. But it is a story about fairies, so feel free to think of it as a fairy story. It's not like you'd believe it anyway.

Our myths, our legends, aren't necessarily true, but they are truly necessary. They have to do with the way we interpret the world and our place in it.

Anyway, while most people can't see fairies anyway because they don't believe in them, seeing them isn't a bad thing. Some of the most beautiful things I've ever seen have been fairies.

There are some awful things in the world, it's true, but there are also some great books. When I grow up I would like to write something that someone could read sitting on a bench on a day that isn't all that warm and they could sit reading it and totally forget where they were or what time it was so that they were more inside the book than inside their own head. I'd like to write like Delany or Heinlein or Le Guin.

I have books, new books, and I can bear anything as long as there are books.

There's something nice about out-and-out children's books with no sex and a happy ending—Ransome, Streatfeild, that kind of thing.

I read in hopes of little sparkling moments that are going to turn my head inside out.

What made him imagine he could have a dialogue with them?" "He's Sokrates," I said. "He's like a two-year-old sticking pencils in his ear," she said.

I wish magic was more dramatic

People tell you to write what you know, but I've found that writing what you know is much harder than making it up.