Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think because they congenitally lack the equipment to do so, just as they congenitally lack the equipment to fly over the moon.
H. L. MenckenDon Quixote’s misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.
Franz KafkaMy favorite book is anything by Kurt Vonnegut – he’s my literary hero. I got to meet him several times, which was a great thrill for me. I don’t really remember what we talked about.
Steven WrightI 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.
Haruki MurakamiIt’s good to wander into the studio and walk out with something that’s better than you’d imagined it to be. If everything was as you imagined it to be, it just wouldn’t be as much fun.
Dave GrohlFantasy 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.
Dr. SeussCollege is a refuge from hasty judgment.
Robert FrostYou might be the funniest guy in the world, but if you don’t have anything to talk about, people are eventually going to gravitate towards the guy that’s actually saying something.
Kevin HartAs 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.
Haruki MurakamiThe Bay of Bengal is hit frequently by cyclones. The months of November and May, in particular, are dangerous in this regard.
A. P. J. Abdul KalamFiction reveals truth that reality obscures.
Ralph Waldo EmersonPeople 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.
Billie EilishThe weather and my mood have little connection. I have my foggy and my fine days within me; my prosperity or misfortune has little to do with the matter.
Blaise PascalThe best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
Winston ChurchillI imagine that yes is the only living thing.
E. E. CummingsThere are no great limits to growth because there are no limits of human intelligence, imagination, and wonder.
Ronald ReaganIn art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.
Ralph Waldo EmersonYou can’t get too much winter in the winter.
Robert FrostA writer of fiction is really… a congenital liar who invents from his own knowledge or that of other men.
Ernest HemingwayNothing is more fearful than imagination without taste.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheOne can find so many pains when the rain is falling.
John SteinbeckScience does not know its debt to imagination.
Ralph Waldo EmersonAll good books have one thing in common – they are truer than if they had really happened.
Ernest HemingwayAmerica is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.
Ralph Waldo EmersonKnowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.
E. E. CummingsClimate is what we expect, weather is what we get.
Mark TwainPeople like to talk about war.
Mark ZuckerbergI often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.
George Bernard ShawNo one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheIt will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic.
Edgar Allan PoeI feel very lucky to make a living from my imagination; I’m very grateful for that. I like that what I do is create. I’m feeling very lucky to have had the career I had. It’s gone much longer and bigger than I ever thought it would be.
Steven WrightHow can one take delight in the world unless one flees to it for refuge?
Franz KafkaIt is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.
H. L. MenckenI agree with people like Richard Dawkins that mankind felt the need for creation myths. Before we really began to understand disease and the weather and things like that, we sought false explanations for them. Now science has filled in some of the realm – not all – that religion used to fill.
Bill GatesRemember that your imagination is yours and yours alone. You have the inborn capacity to use it in any way that you choose. No one else is responsible for your imagination. Anything placed in your imagination and held there ultimately becomes your reality.
Wayne DyerTalking, it seemed to me, was the point of adult existence.
Christopher HitchensPeople 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.
Steven WrightI can unload my opinion on anybody at anytime.
Anthony BourdainI cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation and is but a reflection of human frailty.
Albert EinsteinIt’s not morbid to talk about death. Most people don’t worry about death, they worry about a bad death.
Terry PratchettThe true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.
Albert EinsteinI’ve lived in good climate, and it bores the hell out of me. I like weather rather than climate.
John SteinbeckI have trouble imagining what I could do that’s beyond the practicality of what I can do.
David ByrnePeople want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy… and I keep it in a jar on my desk.
Stephen KingUsually, when Nirvana made music, there wasn’t a lot of conversation. We wanted everything to be surreal. We didn’t want to have some contrived composition.
Dave GrohlNobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
James BaldwinImagination decides everything.
Blaise PascalWhat is a television apparatus to man, who has only to shut his eyes to see the most inaccessible regions of the seen and the never seen, who has only to imagine in order to pierce through walls and cause all the planetary Baghdads of his dreams to rise from the dust.
Salvador DaliCowardice… is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend functioning of the imagination.
Ernest HemingwayIf one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
Henry David ThoreauWhy does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?
Leonardo da VinciIn poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a sure refuge. The young they keep out of mischief; to the old they are a comfort and aid in their weakness, and those in the prime of life they incite to noble deeds.
AristotleIf in the twilight of memory we should meet once more, we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song.
Khalil GibranPeople are generally amazed that I would take an interest in any forum that would require me to stop talking for three hours.
Henry KissingerThat is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best – make it all up – but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way.
Ernest HemingwayI have fun with ideas; I play with them.
Ray BradburyI don’t think there’s such a thing as autobiographical fiction. If I say it happened, it happened, even if only in my mind.
Maya AngelouI know how fiction matters to me, because if I want to express myself, I have to make up a story. Some people call it imagination. To me, it’s not imagination. It’s just a way of watching.
Haruki MurakamiI praticed making faces in the mirror and it would drive my mother crazy. She used to scare me by saying that I was going to see the devil if I kept looking in the mirror. That fascinated me even more, of course.
Jim CarreyI’ve never been able to witness the birth of an idea. It seems as if one second, there’s nothing particularly going on, and the next second, something is there. It’s coming up out of my unconscious, up from places that I don’t even know where they are.
Paul Auster