“Imagination draws on memory. Memory and imagination combined can stage a Servants' Ball or even write a book, if that's what they want to do.”

—  Thornton Wilder , book Theophilus North

Theophilus North (1973)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Imagination draws on memory. Memory and imagination combined can stage a Servants' Ball or even write a book, if that's…" by Thornton Wilder?
Thornton Wilder photo
Thornton Wilder 61
American playwright and novelist 1897–1975

Related quotes

Umberto Eco photo

“This, in fact, is the power of the imagination, which, combining the memory of gold with that of the mountain, can compose the idea of a golden mountain.”

Umberto Eco (1932–2016) Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist

Source: The Name of the Rose (Everyman's Library

Edgar Degas photo

“It is all well and good to copy what one sees, but it is much better to draw only what remains in one's memory. This is a transformation in which imagination and memory collaborate.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

Quote of Degas in 1883, as cited by Colin B. Bailey, in The Annenberg Collection: Masterpieces of Impressionism and Post-impressionism, publish. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2009, p. 30 note 10
Degas confided this to Pierre-George Jeanniot
1876 - 1895

Sarah Dessen photo

“It’s still a memory worth having, even if it’s not exactly what you imagined”

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Variant: It's still a memory worth having, even if it's not exactly what you imagined.
Source: Along for the Ride

Philip Roth photo

“Obviously the facts are never just coming at you but are incorporated by an imagination that is formed by your previous experience. Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts.”

Philip Roth book The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography

Opening letter to Nathan Zuckerman
The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography (1988)

Edgar Degas photo

“It is very good to copy what one sees; it is much better to draw what you can't see any more but is in your memory. It is a transformation in which imagination and memory work together. You only reproduce what struck you, that is to say the necessary.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

C'est très bien de copier ce qu'on voit, c'est beaucoup mieux de dessiner ce que l'on ne voit plus que dans son mémoire. C'est une transformation pendant laquelle l'ingéniosité collabore avec la mémoire. Vous ne reproduisez que ce qui vous a frappé, c'est-à-dire le nécessaire.
Quoted in Maurice Sérullaz, L'univers de Degas (H. Scrépel, 1979), p. 13
quotes, undated

Pierre Bonnard photo

“Imagination is merely the exploitation of our memory.”

Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947) French painter and printmaker
Emil M. Cioran photo

“Life is possible only by the deficiencies of our imagination and memory.”

Emil M. Cioran book A Short History of Decay

A Short History of Decay (1949)

“There is some irony in the fact that children imagine that parents can do what they want, and parents imagine that children do.”

Shulamith Firestone book The Dialectic of Sex

http://books.google.com/books?id=YnY10fNqqp4C&q=%22There+is+some+irony+in+the+fact+that+children+imagine+that+parents+can+do+what+they+want+and+parents+imagine+that+children+do+When+I+grow+up+parallels+Oh+to+be+a+child+again%22&pg=PA102#v=onepage
The Dialectic of Sex (1970)

Les Brown photo

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

Les Brown (1945) American politician

Related topics