Quotes About Imagination

I didn't read a book until I was 31 years old when I was diagnosed with dyslexia. Books terrified me. They made me nervous. Now I know you can travel to the bottom of the ocean or to outer space or anywhere in between without leaving your armchair, and I'm so, so sorry I couldn't read when I was younger.

Believe it or not, my introduction to scary literature was 'Pinocchio.' My mother read it to me every day before naptime when I was three or four. The original 'Pinocchio' is terrifying.

Real pirates were better than in movies, more daring and terrifying and cunning than any screenwriter could imagine. They operated during the Golden Age of Piracy, from 1650 to 1720.

I remember thinking, 'I can't act.' Pretending to be someone else is a terrifying thought. The thing was that, along with other people, I could create a whole world. I felt absolutely right directing.

I don't know where the ideas come from, and it's terrifying. They seem to be absolute flukes. When I was in my 20s, I'd walk around with a notebook all the time and make sure I wrote down anything that occurred to me. Now I'm just hoping that some sort of event will descend on me.

If you read Grimm's fairy tales, they're absolutely terrifying.

I remember when I was younger, we used to read the Goosebumps books that were absolutely terrifying.

I remember thinking this is everything that England means to me. The huge, flat landscapes with deep reds and greens. Daunting and terrifying and incredible. We should see it more on film, I think.

We're 10 or something, and we're watching 'Evil Dead,' which you don't really see the humor in when you're 10 years old. It was just terrifying. And same with 'A Nightmare on Elm Street,' which is such a brilliant movie and such a brilliant concept.

I find doppelgangers terrifying... can you imagine two of me?! Now that's scary!

There is really no such thing as terrifying people. It's the situation and the scene that count. Not the actor.

I've never put Northern Ireland into a novel because it's not my territory. I come from the South, so my imaginative territory is very much the Republic of Ireland rather than the North. Even though, if I wrote a novel about the North, it might sell more.

Make something new, and define territory that's never been. I fall in love with shows because I've never see that before. I fall in love with new vocabularies.

I'm going to try to tell stories and let each tale skate its own way into dark or light territory as the needs of the story steer me.

I don't think I've ever frightened myself before when writing, but there were areas where there was terror, as though I was looking into somewhere that I didn't know existed before, and it frightened me.

When I don't have a story to tell, I'm a terror to live with.

When our ancestors crouched about the camp fire at night, they told each other tales of gods and heroes, monsters and marvels, to hold back the terrors of the night. Such tales comforted and entertained, diverted and educated those who listened, and helped shape their sense of the world and their place in it.

It's not scary to make a horror film because you get to pull back the curtain and see that none of it's real. When you're watching one, the terror bombards you.

When I was a kid, I read books that made me laugh but also made me shiver in terror. I wanted to make books that made other people feel the same way.

A big challenge in combating terrorism is learning how to think about things that we can't imagine.

Do not let fear become disabling. That is what the terrorists want. They want you to imagine them in the shadows; they want you to imagine them as something greater than they are.

I've read a lot of Terry Pratchett's stuff, probably from when I was, like, 14.

Terry Gilliam is one of the greatest brains I ever met.

Terry Gilliam has directed some of the best examples of what I like to see in a film - one of them being 'Baron Munchausen.'