Quotes about imagination
page 8

“It's just like Yeats said. In dreams begin responsibilities. Flip this around and you could say that where there's no power to imagine, no responsibility can arise.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

Dreams

“… [T]here should be a real sense of your imagination and your memories walking and woolgathering, tramping the hills, romping all over the place. Trust them. Don't look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Sense, Memory, Dance

“I never, even for a moment, doubted what they’d told me. This is why it is that adults and even parents can, unwittingly, be cruel: they cannot imagine doubt’s complete absence. They have forgotten.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

Parent

“Live out of your imagination instead of out of your memory.”

Les Brown (1945) American politician

Memory

“Anyone who imagines they can work alone winds up surrounded by nothing but rivals, without companions. The fact is, no one ascends alone.”

Lance Armstrong book It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

Source: It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

For Team

“What looks like politics, and imagines itself to be political, will one day unmask itself as a religious movement.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

“So now I'm thinking about it. I'm imagining sitting down with my parents and actually saying, "I'm gay." And you know what? It makes me a little mad. I mean, straight guys don't have to sit their parents down and tell them they like girls.”

Michael Thomas Ford (1968) American writer

Source: Suicide Notes

Guy, Girl, Thinking, Parent

“You're imagining things. Clearly, my stunning beauty has clouded your mind. -Rose Hathaway”

Richelle Mead book Frostbite

Source: Frostbite

Beauty

“It's time to start living the life you've imagined.”

Henry James (1843–1916) American novelist, short story author, and literary critic

Life, Time

“Literature as a whole is not an aggregate of exhibits with red and blue ribbons attached to them, like a cat-show, but the range of articulate human imagination as it extends from the height of imaginative heaven to the depth of imaginative hell.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

Source: The Educated Imagination

Cats, Literature, Hell

“Nonsense, do you imagine he has thought as much of you as you have of him?”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Source: Wuthering Heights

“Don Quixote's misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

“Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire; you will what you imagine; and at last you create what you will.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

The Serpent, in Pt. I, Act I
1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)

“To her own heart it was a delightful affair, to her imagination it was even a ridiculous one, but to her reason, her judgment, it was completely a puzzle.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Source: Sense and Sensibility: The Screenplay

Heart

“Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“It is not a thing that you can imagine. It only is. After that, there can be no imagining.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

“An idea is salvation by imagination”

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American architect (1867-1959)

Idea

“specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved.”

Max Weber book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Source: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Heart

“my imagination persisted in sticking horrors into the dark- so I stuck my imagination into the dark instead, and let it look out at me.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book This Side of Paradise

Source: This Side of Paradise

“Do you remember how you felt at seventeen? I do and I don't (…) Imagine you came from outer space and someone showed you a butterfly and a caterpillar. Would you ever put the two of them together? That's me and my memories.”

Douglas Coupland The Gum Thief

Source: The Gum Thief

Memory

“What occurs to people when they read Kurt [Vonnegut] is that things are much more up for grabs than they thought they were. The world is a slightly different place just because they read a damn book. Imagine that.”

Mark Vonnegut (1947) American physician and writer

People, Books, World, Reading

“But on that sunlit Sunday, Alexander knew nothing, thought nothing, imagined nothing. He forgot Dimitri and war and the Soviet Union and escape plans, and even America, and crossed the street for Tatiana Metanova.”

Paullina Simons book Tatiana and Alexander

Source: Tatiana and Alexander

War

“Just then, my phone started ringing. The ring must have been damaged by the water as well, so now it had a high, keening note - kind of the sound I imagine a mermaid might make if you punched her in the face.”

Maureen Johnson book Let It Snow

Source: Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances

Water

“I should like the fields tinged with red, the rivers yellow and the trees painted blue. Nature has no imagination.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

Nature, Tree, Painting

“Through imagination, we can visualize the uncredited worlds of potential that lie within us.”

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

Lie, World

“The key to seeing the world's soul, and in the process wakening our own, is to get over the confusion by which we think that fact is real and imagination is illusion.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

Source: Original Self: Living with Paradox and Originality

World, Soul, Thinking

“I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of imagination — what the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth — whether it existed before or not.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Letter to Benjamin Bailey (November 22, 1817)
Letters (1817–1820)

Truth, Beauty, Heart

“The importance of reading, for me, is that it allows you to dream.

Reading not only educates, but is relaxing and allows you to feed your imagination - creating beautiful pictures from carefully chosen words.”

Eric Ripert (1965) French chef

Education, Beauty, Dreams, Reading

“I'm not saying it because I'm sweet. I'm saying it because I love you now and I always have. More than you can imagine.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

Love

“Privilege, you see, is one of the great adversaries of the imagination; it spreads a thick layer of adipose tissue over our sensitivity.”

Chinua Achebe (1930–2013) Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic

Source: Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays

“Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.”

Steven Pressfield (1943) United States Marine

Variant: Our job in this life is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

“Because fear kills everything," Mo had once told her. "Your mind, your heart, your imagination.”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkheart

Fear, Heart

“Imagination is the golden-eyed monster that never sleeps. It must be fed; it cannot be ignored.”

Patricia A. McKillip (1948) American fantasy writer

Sleep

“The difference between childhood and adulthood, Vic had come to believe, was the difference between imagination and resignation. You traded one for the other and lost your way.”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

Source: NOS4A2

Way, Childhood, Adulthood

“Don’t you understand?” he would say, “You imagine the story better than I remember it.”

John Irving book The Hotel New Hampshire

Source: The Hotel New Hampshire

Understanding

“A thought experiment courtesy of the Stoics. If you are tired of everything you possess, imagine that you have lost all these things.”

Jenny Offill book Dept. of Speculation

Source: Dept. of Speculation

“What you are to do without me I cannot imagine.”

George Bernard Shaw Pygmalion

Source: Pygmalion

“I thought I could make out Jamie's Highland screech, but that was likely imagination; they all sounded equally demented.”

Diana Gabaldon (1952) American author

Source: An Echo in the Bone

“There are lives I can imagine without children but none of them have the same laughter & noise.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Children, Laughter

“Formulate and stamp indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself as succeeding. Hold this picture tenaciously. Never permit it to fade. Your mind will seek to develop the picture… Do not build up obstacles in your imagination.”

Norman Vincent Peale book The Power of Positive Thinking

Source: The Power of Positive Thinking

“Girls had to believe in anything but their own power, because if girls knew what they could do, imagine what they might.”

Robin Wasserman (1978) American writer of speculative fiction for young people

Source: Girls on Fire

Girl

“Imagination means nothing without doing.”

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

“Half of my heart's got a real good imagination, half of my heart's got you… Half of my hearts got a right mind to tell you that half of my heart won't do.”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

Half of My Heart
Song lyrics, Battle Studies (2009)
Source: John Mayer - Battle Studies
Context: I was born in the arms of imaginary friends,
Free to roam, made a home out of everywhere I've been.
Then you come crashing in, like the realest thing,
Trying my best to understand all that your love can bring.Oh half of my heart's got a grip on the situation;
Half of my heart takes time.
Half of my heart's got a right mind to tell you
That I can't keep loving you (can't keep loving you)
Oh, with half of my heart.

Heart

“Fantasy leaves imaginations larger than it finds them.”

Brandon Mull (1974) American fiction writer

“A story doesn't live until it is imagined in someone's mind.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Way of Kings, Part 1

“What's crazy is living your life according to some book written by someone who couldn't imagine what your life would be like.”

James Frey book The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

Source: The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

Life, Books

“No matter how qualified or deserving we are, we will never reach a better life until we can imagine it for ourselves and allow ourselves to have it.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Life

“In Kilanga, people knew nothing of things they might have had - a Frigidaire? a washer-dryer combination? Really, they'd sooner imagine a tree that could pull up its feet and go bake bread. It didn't occur to them to feel sorry for themselves.”

Barbara Kingsolver (1955) American author, poet and essayist

People, Feeling, Tree

“It may well be impossible for people who have lived and prospered under a given social system to imagine the point of view of those who feel it offers them nothing, and who can contemplate its destruction without any particular dismay.”

Michel Houellebecq (1956) writer

Source: Submission

People, Feeling

“… along with the other animals, the stones, the trees, and the clouds, we ourselves are characters within a huge story that is visibly unfolding all around us, participants within the vast imagination, or Dreaming, of the world.”

David Abram (1957) American philosopher, ecologist

Source: The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World

World, Dreams, Tree, Animals

“Dream on, but don't imagine they'll all come true. When will you realize… Vienna waits for you.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Vienna.
Song lyrics, The Stranger (1977)
Context: But you know you can't always see when you're right
You got your passion you got your pride
But don't you know only fools are satisfied?
Dream on, but don't imagine they'll all come true
When will you realize
Vienna waits for you?

Dreams, Waiting

“When you resort to violence to prove a point, you’ve just experienced a profound failure of imagination.”

Sherman Alexie (1966) Native American author and filmmaker

Source: The Toughest Indian in the World

Failure

“I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Source: Frankenstein

Love, Peace, Rage

“War is an absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political. That a war can be represented as helping a people to 'feel good' about themselves, or their country, is a measure of that failure.”

Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) American poet, essayist and feminist

War, People, Feeling, Failure

“We're hallucinating. And that's what this world is: a mass hallucination, where fear seems more real than love. Fear is an illusion. Our craziness, paranoia, anxiety and trauma are literally all imagined.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Source: A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"

Love, World, Fear

“Virtue is imaginative, evil repetitive.”

Dean Koontz book Odd Apocalypse

Odd Apocalypse

Evil

“Faith ― acceptance of which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove.”

Dan Brown book The Da Vinci Code

Source: The Da Vinci Code

Faith, Faith

“How amazing it is that friendships can become so full that you can't imagine what your life was like before them.”

David Levithan book Love Is the Higher Law

Source: Love Is the Higher Law

Life, Friendship

“Look at your body—
A painted puppet, a poor toy
Of jointed parts ready to collapse,
A diseased and suffering thing
With a head full of false imaginings.”

Thomas Ligotti (1953) American horror author

Description: from the The Dhammapada
Source: The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror (2010)

Disease, Suffering, Parting, Painting

“Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

31 May 1830.
Table Talk (1821–1834)
Context: The Pilgrim's Progress is composed in the lowest style of English, without slang or false grammar. If you were to polish it, you would at once destroy the reality of the vision. For works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.

“Nothing in life is ever as simple as we imagine.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Life

“… so young, so lonely and naive, that she imagined herself as some sort of vessel to be filled up with love. But it wasn't like that. The love was within her all the time and its only renewal came from giving it away.”

Kim Edwards book The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Source: The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Love, Time

“If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Author's Note, p. xi
Source: Life of Pi (2001)

Dreams, Support, Reality

“Imagine the uproar if the Federal government tried to make everyone wear a radio transmitter around their neck so we can keep track of their movements. But people happily carry their cell phones in their purses and pockets.”

Lee Child book A Wanted Man

Source: A Wanted Man

People

“You said there was nothing in the world you wanted" The Queen's eyes glittered. "When you imagine your life without him, do you still feel the same?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Life, World, Feeling

“I think that where you go wrong is that you imagine that your reasons for living ought to fall on you, ready-made from heaven, whereas we have to find them for ourselves.”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Blood of Others

Source: The Blood of Others

Thinking

“… there were certain chapters when I stopped writing, saw the domestic situation I was in and thought, "I don't want to face this world, let's get back to the hellish one I'm imagining.”

Alasdair Gray (1934–2019) Scottish writer and artist

World

“For what can be imagined more beautiful than the sight of a perfectly just city rejoicing in justice alone.”

Mark Helprin book Winter's Tale

Source: Winter's Tale

Justice, Beauty

“How potent is the fancy! People are so impressionable, they can die of imagination.”

Geoffrey Chaucer (1343–1400) English poet

People

“I am ignoring you. In fact, I think you are a figment of my imagination.”

Bruce Coville (1950) American writer

Source: Dark Whispers

Thinking

“Reason is intelligence taking exercise; imagination is intelligence with an erection.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Unpublished notebook from 1845-50. Published in Seebacher (ed.), Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 10, p. 158 (Laffont, 1989). English translation from Robb, Victor Hugo p. 249 (Norton, 1997).

Exercises, Intelligence

“Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002)

Fear, Reality

“In the blink of an eye, something happens by chance - when you least expect it - sets you on a course that you never planned, into a future you never imagined.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Lucky One

Source: The Lucky One

Chance, Future

“Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day. That was the business of hiding a Jew.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Variant: Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day.
Source: The Book Thief

Smile, Business, Thinking

“The imagination is the goal of history. I see culture as an effort to literally realize our collective dreams.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

Dreams, History, Effort

“Libraries store the energy that fuels the imagination. They open up windows to the world and inspire us to explore and achieve, and contribute to improving our quality of life. Libraries change lives for the better.”

Sidney Sheldon (1917–2007) American writer

Life, World, Change

“Calvin: Girls are like slugs—they probably serve some purpose, but it's hard to imagine what.
p71”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes
Source: The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes: A Calvin and Hobbes Treasury

Girl

“Cupid, you worthless bastard, I summon you to human form! (Julian)
Gee, I can't imagine why he wouldn't respond to that. (Grace)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon Fantasy Lover

Source: Fantasy Lover

“It’s a huge thing, this Shift, just as big as I imagined. My brain doesn’t want to think anymore; all of a sudden it wants to do.”

Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story

Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

Thinking

“One of the things he'd always loved about Clary was how easily caught up in her imagination she was, how easily she could wall herself away in illusory worlds of curses and princes and destiny and magic.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Love, World

“It occurs to me that we allow ourselves to imagine only such messages as we need to survive.”

Joan Didion The Year of Magical Thinking

Source: The Year of Magical Thinking

“The possible's slow fuse is lit by the Imagination.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

“A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

Time

“Of course, the liar often imagines that he does no harm as long as his lies go undetected.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Source: Lying

“The world before us is a postcard, and I imagine the story we are writing on it.”

Mary E. Pearson (1955) young-adult fiction writer

Source: The Miles Between

World

“All these things that crib and cab in your brain, in your imagination, are in fact things that might well in later life drive you insane.”

Diana Wynne Jones (1934–2011) English children's fantasy writer

Life

“Snow was falling,
so much like stars
filling the dark trees
that one could easily imagine
its reason for being was nothing more
than prettiness.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Star, Tree

“You speak of Lord Byron and me; there is this great difference between us. He describes what he sees I describe what I imagine. Mine is the hardest task.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

“If you've seen a crab's mouth, all foamy and gross with whiskers and snapping bits, you can imagine this one didn't look any better blown up to billboard size.”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Source: The Last Olympian

“Love what you do and do what you love. Don't listen to anyone else who tells you not to do it. You do what you want, what you love. Imagination should be the center of your life.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Love, Life

“for 100,000 (dollars), you [can] flatten a house with a wrecking ball. Imagine how much less it [takes] to destroy something than it [does] to build it in the first place.”

Jodi Picoult book Nineteen Minutes

Source: Nineteen Minutes

Housing

“There are some people who will never understand what
loyalty means. They could tell you what it was, of course,
but they will never know. They will never see it from the inside.
They couldn't imagine a world where something like that was real.”

Jim Butcher book First Lord's Fury

Source: First Lord's Fury

People, World, Understanding, Loyalty

“You’ll just have to imagine”

Peter Watts (1958) Canadian biologist and sci-fi author

Blindsight

“Everything to be imagined is an image of truth.”

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

Truth

“we had made love without love, half-dressed most of the time and always in the dark so we could imagine ourselves as better than we were.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

Love, Time

“As he thought of it, though, he could not imagine what “just living” might actually be. He had never done it in his life. But he wanted to do it anyway.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

Life

“All you imagined, no matter how wild it might seem, was no more than a disguised version of what you already knew.”

Stephen King book The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah

Source: Song of Susannah

“Remember the botched brothel-visit in L’Education sentimentale and remember its lesson. Do not participate: happiness lies in the imagination, not the act. Pleasure is found first in anticipation, later in memory.”

Julian Barnes book Flaubert's Parrot

Source: Flaubert's Parrot

Happiness, Pleasure, Memory

“It's me," said Jace. "Watching me play Scrabble is enough to make most women swoon. Imagine if I actually put in some effort.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Variant: It’s me,” said Jace. “Watching me play Scrabble is enough to make most women swoon. Imagine if I actually put in some effort.
Source: City of Lost Souls

Women, Effort

“Things change…things happen…things you can’t even imagine when you’re young and full of hope.”

Judy Blume (1938) American children's writer

Hope, Change

Quotes about imagination page 8

Quotes about imagination
page 8