I imagined being a famous writer would be like being like Jane Austen.

Surrealism had a great effect on me because then I realised that the imagery in my mind wasn’t insanity. Surrealism to me is reality.

As a novelist, you could say that I am dreaming while I am awake, and every day I can continue with yesterday’s dream. Because it is a dream, there are so many contradictions and I have to adjust them to make the story work. But, in principle, the original dream does not change.

When I was 8, I thought I was Harrison Ford, Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor, Elvis, and Chuck Norris all at once.

Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages. I have been at it since I could write.

I believe in everything until it’s disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now?

Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.

Without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.

All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination.

When you’re around kids you can be a little kid yourself and pretend that life is magic and you don’t have to be one of those sweaty people going to work every day.

When you pick up a book, everyone knows it’s imaginary. You don’t have to pretend it’s not a book. We don’t have to pretend that people don’t write books. That omniscient third-person narration isn’t the only way to do it. Once you’re writing in the first person, then the narrator is a writer.

Live out of your imagination, not your history.

I’m half living my life between reality and fantasy at all times.

When I have an idea, I turn down the flame, as if it were a little alcohol stove, as low as it will go. Then it explodes and that is my idea.

The human race is governed by its imagination.

The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.

I used to pretend that my Peugeot driving to the gym in the rain in Dublin was a Ferrari on the Vegas strip.

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

But if I have a lot of imagination, I could tell myself whatever I wanted, you know. I handle myself quite well. I’m kind of fascist with myself, you know. There’s no discussion. There is an order. You follow it.

Science fiction, to me, has not only things that wouldn’t happen, but other planets.

Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman, but believing what he read made him mad.

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.

You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

You have to dream intentionally. Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally.

Imagination rules the world.

We can fear things into existence. Fear looks into the future and imagines the worst that can happen.

People may think I’m trying something new by telling stories, but they’re just jokes connected to give the illusion of stories. But really, I just continue using my imagination and creating. That’s what I do.

When I was making ‚Star Wars,‘ I wasn’t restrained by any kind of science. I simply said, ‚I’m going to create a world that’s fun and interesting, makes sense, and seems to have a reality to it.‘

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.

I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation and is but a reflection of human frailty.

Imagination decides everything.

Stories surge up out of nowhere, and if they feel compelling, you follow them. You let them unfold inside you and see where they are going to lead.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.

People think you have to go through something to write about it, and you absolutely do not. You can write about, like, a shoe. It’s a story.

Scientists have to have a metaphor. All scientists start with imagination.

Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.

I can make something magical and wonderful out of nothing.

Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!

I was enjoying myself writing, because I don’t know what’s going to happen when I take a ride around that corner. You don’t know at all what you’re going to find there. That can be thrilling when you read a book, especially when you’re a kid and you’re reading stories.

‚For Whom the Bell Tolls‘ was a problem which I carried on each day. I knew what was going to happen in principle. But I invented what happened each day I wrote.

Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.

Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.

I hate to tell you this, but you will never actually go to a galaxy far, far away and encounter Darth Vader. That’s science fiction; it isn’t going to happen.

Speculative fiction encompasses that which we could actually do. Sci-fi is that which we’re probably not going to see.

The man who has no imagination has no wings.

All the breaks you need in life wait within your imagination, Imagination is the workshop of your mind, capable of turning mind energy into accomplishment and wealth.

I had the most magical childhood, running free and going anywhere I wanted to in my head.

Jane Austen is the pinnacle to which all other authors aspire.

Anything you put your mind to and add your imagination into can make your life a lot better and a lot more fun.

A writer of fiction is really… a congenital liar who invents from his own knowledge or that of other men.

I never dreamt, in my dream, I’m Dalai Lama.

I suspect that even most conservatives would prefer to live in the kind of world conjured up in the liberals‘ imagination rather than in the kind of world we are in fact stuck with.

A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

I think kids are natural actors. You watch most kids; if they don’t have a toy, they’ll pick up a stick and make a toy out of it. Kids will daydream all the time.

I think a lot of people, including me, clammed up when a civilian asked about battle, about war. It was fashionable. One of the most impressive ways to tell your war story is to refuse to tell it, you know. Civilians would then have to imagine all kinds of deeds of derring-do.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact.

There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.