Quotes about imagination
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“It takes too much imagination to see the sorrows of people we take for happy. Their real battles take place, like those of the stars, in some realm of light imperceptible to the human eye. It is a feat of the mind to guess another's heart.”

Andrew Sean Greer (1970) Novelist, short story writer

Source: Confessions Of Max Tivoli

Happiness, People, Star, Light

“it's best to accept life as it really is and not as I imagined it to be”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Veronika Decides to Die

Life

“It's Thursday afternoon, and we have sports. These are the choices for the girls: watching an invitational cricket game; studying in one of the classrooms; or watching the senior rugby league. As you can imagine, I'm torn.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Saving Francesca

Girl, Game, Sport, Study

“A little too much anger, too often or at the wrong time, can destroy more than you would ever imagine.”

Marilynne Robinson Gilead

Source: Gilead

Time, Anger

“I imagined loading the God of the Sea into a taxi and taking him to the Upper East Side.”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

God, Sea

“I am a writer. Imagining what someone would say or do comes to me as naturally as breathing.”

Joan Didion The Year of Magical Thinking

Source: The Year of Magical Thinking

Nature

“We are all born with extraordinary powers of imagination, intelligence, feeling, intuition, spirituality, and of physical and sensory awareness. (p.9)”

Ken Robinson (1950) UK writer

Source: The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

Feeling, Intelligence

“Doing what you're supposed to do is always boring. I can't imagine anything worse than being required to have fun.”

Scott Westerfeld book Uglies

Source: Uglies

“Seeing him again after so long awakened something inside me. I was surprised to find myself feeling sad rather than joyful, as I would have imagined.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Sadness, Feeling

“Imagine who she would be if we unleashed her onto the world. I think she would rip the breath from all of us.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Froi of the Exiles

World, Thinking

“Imagine what could be accomplished if only the human race would shed its humanity.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

“It was great. Freedom even the imagined kind always is.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

Freedom

“She tried to imagine what Charles would do if another man came up to him and said, "You bring me joy.”

Patricia Briggs book Hunting Ground

Source: Hunting Ground

Joy

“A thought is a substace, producing the thing that is imagined by the thought.”

Wallace D. Wattles (1860–1911) American writer

“There must me something in books, things we can't imagine.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Variant: There must be something in books, things we can't imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house.
Source: Fahrenheit 451

Books

“A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

Source: A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays

Pain, Pleasure

“My imagination needs therapy.”

Jim Butcher book Skin Game

Source: Skin Game

“Your imagination dictates your destination.”

Stephen Richards

“Hell, at this point, I can’t imagine my story without Amy. She is my forever antagonist. We are one long frightening climax.”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

Hell

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Life, Way

“And though the coldness I have always felt leaves me, the numbness doesn't and probably never will. this relationship will probably lead to nothing… this didn't change anything. I imagine her smelling clean, like tea…”

Bret Easton Ellis book American Psycho

Source: American Psycho

Change, Tea

“We couldn't imagine the emptiness of a creature who put a razor to her wrists and opened her veins, the emptiness and the calm.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Virgin Suicides

Source: The Virgin Suicides

“Imagine how they would have mocked you if you proclaimed, 'Not only is the world a sphere, but there is an invisible, mystical force that holds everything to its surface'!”

Dan Brown book The Lost Symbol

Source: The Lost Symbol

World

“I also became a poet, and for one year lived in a Paradise of my own creation; I imagined that I also might obtain a niche in the temple where the names of Homer and Shakespeare are consecrated.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Source: Frankenstein

“Life can be wonderful if you're not afraid of it. All it takes is courage, imagination… and a little dough”

Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) British comic actor and filmmaker

Life, Courage

“You always have a choice. Don't ever imagine you don't. Whatever you do, it's a decision and you have to accept responsibility for it. That's when honor becomes more than empty words.”

Lynn Flewelling Stalking Darkness

Source: Stalking Darkness

Decision

“He thought there was no hope for him. Me? I can't imagine a world without hope.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

World, Hope

“This world demands the qualities of youth; not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the life of ease.”

Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968) American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy

Life, Youth, World, Courage

“Writing a novel is not merely going on a shopping expedition across the border to an unreal land: it is hours and years spent in the factories, the streets, the cathedrals of the imagination.”

Janet Frame (1924–2004) New Zealand author

“We have to endure the discordance between imagination and fact. It is better to say, “I am suffering,” than to say, “This landscape is ugly.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Suffering

“The heart of an Irishman is nothing but his imagination”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Heart

“It takes a huge effort to free yourself from memory, but when you succeed, you start to realize that you’re capable of far more than you imagined. You live in this vast body called the Universe, which contains all the solutions and all the problems. Visit your soul; don’t visit your past. The Universe goes through many mutations and carries the past with it. We call each of those mutations a ‘life,’ but just as the cells in your body change and yet you remain the same, so time does not pass, it merely changes.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Aleph (2011)

Life, Soul, Problem, Effort

“Actually, orcas aren't quite as complex as scientists imagine. Most killer whales are just four tons of doofus dressed up like a police car.”

Christopher Moore (1957) American writer of comic fantasy

Source: Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings

Cars

“Nature is the direct expression of the divine imagination.”

John O'Donohue (1956–2008) Irish writer, priest and philosopher

Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

Nature

“In an era of stress and anxiety, when the present seems unstable and the future unlikely, the natural response is to retreat and withdraw from reality, taking recourse either in fantasies of the future or in modified visions of a half-imagines past”

Alan Moore book Watchmen

Source: Watchmen

Nature, Reality, Past, Future

“Being a practiced liar doesn't mean you have a powerful imagination. Many good liars have no imagination at all;”

Philip Pullman book Northern Lights

Source: His Dark Materials, The Golden Compass (1995), Ch. 15 : The Dæmon Cages
Context: Being a practiced liar doesn't mean you have a powerful imagination. Many good liars have no imagination at all; it's that which gives their lies such wide-eyed conviction.

“Sometimes I imagined stitching all of our little touches together. How many hundreds of thousands of fingers brushing against each other does it take to make love? Why does anyone ever make love?”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005)
Context: I put my hand on him. Touching him has always been important to me, it was something I lived for. I never could explain why. Little, nothing touches, my fingers against his shoulder, the outsides of our thighs touching as we squeeled together on the bus. I couldnt explain it, but I needed it. Sometimes I imagined stiching all of our little touches together. How many hundreds of thousands of fingers brushing against each other does it take to make love?

Love, Making love

“It's a mistake, you know. You have no idea what you'll be exposed to… the obscenities and lewd comments, the lecherous gazes, the groping and pinching… and that's just my house. Imagine what it would be like here.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Devil in Winter

Idea, Housing

“Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything Godlike about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything.”

Henry Miller book Sexus

Tropic of Capricorn (1939)
Source: Sexus

God

“She liked to imagine that when she passed, the world looked after her, but she also knew how anonymous she was. Except when she was at work, no one knew where she was at any time of day and no one waited for her. It was immaculate anonymity.”

Alice Sebold book The Lovely Bones

Source: The Lovely Bones

World, Time, Waiting

“She made me feel better than I have ever felt, better than I imagined I could feel, and it scared me, it scared me to the point of paralysis.”

James Frey book A Million Little Pieces

Source: A Million Little Pieces

Feeling

“Sometimes, as much as writing saves one’s own life, you cannot imagine how it will save another’s. This is another reason why it is important to do the work, over and over again. It is food, the kind a soul needs.”

Lilith Saintcrow (1976) American writer

Life, Food, Soul

“What's a mediator you ask? Oh, a person who acts as a liason between the living and the dead. Hey, wait a minute… what're you doing with that strait jacket?-Suze Simon's imagination”

Meg Cabot book Twilight

Source: Twilight

Waiting, Personality, Dead

“i imagine that yes is the only living thing.”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos (1980), p. 4

World

“I can imagine myself on my death-bed, spent utterly with lust to touch the next world, like a boy asking for his first kiss from a woman.”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

Death, World, Boy, Kiss

“Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today.”

Herman Wouk (1915–2019) Pulitzer Prize-winning American author whose novels include The Caine Mutiny, The Winds of War and War and …

“Now that the real and the imagined had collided, he wondered if she, like he, longed for the past, for the normal. He wondered if normalcy was something, like vision or silence, you didn't realize was precious until you lost it.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Silence, Past

“Live out of your imagination, not your history.”

Stephen R. Covey (1932–2012) American educator, author, businessman and motivational speaker

As quoted in Wake-up Calls : You Don't Have to Sleepwalk through your Life, Love, or Career! (1992) by Eric Allenbaugh, p. 65

History, Motivational, Success, Inspirational

“She waited for the train to pass. Then she said, "I sometimes think that people’s hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows what’s at the bottom. All you can do is imagine by what comes floating to the surface every once in a while.”

Haruki Murakami book Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Variant: I sometimes think that people's hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows what's at the bottom. All you can do is guess from what comes floating to the surface every once in a while.
Source: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

People, Thinking, Waiting, Heart

“As birds' wings beat the solid air without which none could fly so words freed by the imagination affirm reality by their flight.”

William Carlos Williams book Spring and All

Source: Spring and All

Bird, Reality, Flying

“(Man in bar) Can you imagine a world without men? (Sylvia) No crime, and lots of happy, fat women.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, pp. 212-213

Women, Men, Happiness, World

“Dreams are extremely important. You can’t do it unless you imagine it.”

George Lucas (1944) American film producer

Dreams, Graduation

“She had never imagined she had the power to make someone else so happy. And not a magical power, either--a purely human one.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Happiness

“We thought we were being mature when we were only being safe. We imagined we were being responsible but were only being cowardly. What we called realism turned out to be a way of avoiding things rather than facing them.”

Julian Barnes book The Sense of an Ending

Source: The Sense of an Ending

Way

“When we wallow in guilt, remorse, and shame over real or imagined sins of the past, we are disdaining God's gift of grace.”

Brennan Manning (1934–2013) writer, American Roman Catholic priest and United States Marine

God, Past

“When we accept small wonders, we qualify ourselves to imagine great wonders.”

Tom Robbins book Jitterbug Perfume

Source: Jitterbug Perfume

“I can't imagine what possessed you to propose to me."
"Well that will give you something to puzzle over any time you can't sleep.”

Georgette Heyer (1902–1974) British historical romance and detective fiction novelist

Source: Behold, Here's Poison

Sleep, Time

“Authors do not supply imaginations, they expect their readers to have their own, and to use it”

Nella Larsen (1891–1964) Novelist, librarian, nurse

“Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Life

“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Variant: Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions.

Life, Business

“Imagination can take you Places…. READ”

Brandon Mull Fablehaven

Source: Fablehaven

Reading

“Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

World, Universe

“Anything you may hold firmly in your imagination can be yours.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

“How much does one imagine, how much observe? One can no more separate those functions than divide light from air, or wetness from water.”

Elspeth Huxley (1907–1997) Kenyan writer

Source: The Flame Trees of Thika: Memories of an African Childhood

Light, Water

“This pool is a triumph of imagination. That's how you win at life, Gin. You have to imagine your way through. Never say something can't be done. There's always a solution, even if it's weird.”

Maureen Johnson (1973) writer from the USA

Source: The Last Little Blue Envelope

Life, Way

“On a night without moon or stars you can't see a thing, but you can imagine anything.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Survivor

Source: Survivor

Star, Night

“Is it my imagination, or is there some kind of jealousy thing going on here?"-Inuyasha
(gives Inuyasha a really bad look)"It's your imagination."-Sango
(Inuyasha tries to hide behind Kagome)
"Whatever you say."-Kagome”

Rumiko Takahashi (1957) manga artist

Jealousy

“It's weird, how much he's noticed me… And apparently, I have not been as oblivious to him as I imagined, either.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

“… If you work hard enough and assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires. (151)”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: Outliers: The Story of Success

World

“… I have noticed that when things happen in one's imaginings, they never happen in one's life, so I am curbing myself.”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

Source: I Capture the Castle

Life

“I had made a decision, although I hardly knew it yet. It's often that way with decisions, they're made in some hidden part of us and the awareness secretes itself slowly into that conscious part of us that imagines it decides.”

Neil Jordan Mistaken

Source: Mistaken

Secret, Way, Decision, Parting

“Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.”

James Baldwin book Nobody Knows My Name

"The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy" in Esquire (May 1961)
Variant: Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
Source: Nobody Knows My Name

Heart