Fantasy is uni-age. You can start it in the creche, and it follows you to death.

I used to live with my grandmother. I used to wonder why the other kids in school went home with their mothers and fathers. I wanted to be the guy that got married. I wanted to be the guy with the children and the white picket fence. I never had that.

My theory has always been, that if we are to dream, the flatteries of hope are as cheap, and pleasanter, than the gloom of despair.

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.

Memory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories – and telling other people a somewhat different version of our stories.

Do not tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don’t tell them where they know the fish.

I have always enjoyed watching my songs make people cry.

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

Music helps me tell my story. That’s where I can really be heard. But there’s so much focus on the things that aren’t music.

We want an Afghanistan that is shaped by the dreams of the great Afghan people, not by irrational fears and overreaching ambitions of others.

The stories are not autobiographical, but they’re personal in that way. I seem to know only the things that I’ve learned. Probably some things through observation, but what I feel I know surely is personal.

Listen; there’s a hell of a good universe next door: let’s go.

Storytelling is a very old human skill that gives us an evolutionary advantage. If you can tell young people how you kill an emu, acted out in song or dance, or that Uncle George was eaten by a croc over there, don’t go there to swim, then those young people don’t have to find out by trial and error.

A life without adventure is likely to be unsatisfying, but a life in which adventure is allowed to take whatever form it will is sure to be short.

I know a lot of people say they always believed they could get into F1, but I didn’t quite believe that, certainly not when I was 7 and maybe not until I was 14. It was always so far away.

Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.

Whenever a thing is done for the first time, it releases a little demon.

I’m someone who likes plowing new ground, then walking away from it. I get bored easily. For me, the big thrill comes with the discovering.

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.

I hope I didn’t bore you too much with my life story.

Flying might not be all plain sailing, but the fun of it is worth the price.

I want people to follow their dreams, yes… but I’m not interested in telling young black kids how to be rappers… I want to show them that there’s so many other paths you can take, besides a rapper or basketball player.

If I see a mountain, I just pick up and hike it.

Look at the sky. We are not alone. The whole universe is friendly to us and conspires only to give the best to those who dream and work.

America is the student who defies the odds to become the first in a family to go to college – the citizen who defies the cynics and goes out there and votes – the young person who comes out of the shadows to demand the right to dream. That’s what America is about.

There’s a certain amount of freedom involved in cycling: you’re self-propelled and decide exactly where to go. If you see something that catches your eye to the left, you can veer off there, which isn’t so easy in a car, and you can’t cover as much ground walking.

I’m never a reliable narrator, unbiased or objective.

If you don’t know your full-throttle history, the whole story of how you came to where you are, it’s kind of hard to put things together.

Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding.

Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages.

It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive.

Aptitude found in the understanding and is often inherited. Genius coming from reason and imagination, rarely.

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

Positional leaders ignore the fact that every person has hopes, dreams, desires, and goals of his own. And leaders must bring their vision and the aspirations of the people they lead together in a way that benefits everyone.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

I loved writing for kids, I loved talking to children about what I’d written, I don’t want to leave that behind.

Anything for the quick life, as the man said when he took the situation at the lighthouse.

What I enjoy most is doing something I’ve never done before.

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.

Death is just life’s next big adventure.

I think the reason my stories have been so successful is that I have a strong sense of metaphor.

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

The ‚peace movement‘ exists only in the fantasies of the paranoid.

I 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.

Image, lyrics, content, storytelling, cohesive body of work – that’s Prince to me.

In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield.

I’m working on my life story. I’m not decided if it’s going to be a musical or a movie with music in it.

Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.

Well, the odds must be against anybody being able to fly around the world in a balloon on the first attempt. All of us who are attempting to go around the world in balloons are effectively flying in experimental craft because these craft cannot be tested.

Sports are basically our way of feeling sorry for ourselves. Most men can’t become athletes. We’re watching guys who actually made it. We see them dunking and making touchdowns. Then we think about ourselves when we were younger.

We must think and act like a nation of a billion people and not like that of a million people. Dream, dream, dream!

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

If I’m gonna tell a real story, I’m gonna start with my name.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.

The mountains are calling and I must go.

A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.

If you can’t read, the only thing you can do is enjoy the pictures, not the whole story. Reading is the key to knowledge. Knowledge is the key to understanding. So read on, young man! Read on, young lady!

I 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.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

The secret to the movie business, or any business, is to get a good education in a subject besides film – whether it’s history, psychology, economics, or architecture – so you have something to make a movie about. All the skill in the world isn’t going to help you unless you have something to say.