There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

Everyone has at least one story, and each of us is funny if we admit it. You have to admit you’re the funniest person you’ve ever heard of.

The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.

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.

Every day, my mom and I would watch a different Judy Garland VHS. I love how she tells a story when she sings. It was just about her voice and the words she was singing – no strings attached or silly hair or costumes, just a woman singing her heart out. I feel like that doesn’t happen that much anymore.

Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality.

Few people have the imagination for reality.

I always have a basic plot outline, but I like to leave some things to be decided while I write.

I love to watch videos, and I’ve always liked to film and take pictures. I have an eye for really weird things that nobody thinks about. I used to make little movies about myself and then edit them on iMovie.

I dislike Allegory – the conscious and intentional allegory – yet any attempt to explain the purport of myth or fairytale must use allegorical language.

Fiction is such a world of freedom, it’s wonderful. If you want someone to fly, they can fly.

Facebook is really about communicating and telling stories… We think that people can really help spread awareness of organ donation and that they want to participate in this to their friends. And that can be a big part of helping solve the crisis that’s out there.

The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.

The instrument that I never learned how to play was my fans. You know, they are the part of the story that nobody teaches you. I just want to do the right thing; I want to be a voice with them, among them.

These are all personal crises, I’m sure, that I manifest in a song format and project into physical situations. You make little stories up about how you feel. It’s as simple as that.

This world is but a canvas to our imagination.

The best book, like the best speech, will do it all – make us laugh, think, cry and cheer – preferably in that order.

For a true writer, each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.

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

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.

People 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.

Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes.

Miss a meal if you have to, but don’t miss a book.

Dickens is one of those authors who are well worth stealing.

I rewrote the ending to ‚Farewell to Arms,‘ the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied.

All good books have one thing in common – they are truer than if they had really happened.

There is nothing which can better deserve your patronage, than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.

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.

Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination.

I read a lot of obscure books and it is nice to open a book.

The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.

Books are alive, you see. They’re not dead, they’re alive.

Those Dutchmen had hardly any imagination or fantasy, but their good taste and their scientific knowledge of composition were enormous.

Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince.

For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.

Every story has its demands.

Never, and I mean never, allow anyone else’s ideas of who you can or can’t become sully your dream or pollute your imagination. This is your territory, and a ‚Keep Out‘ sign is a great thing to erect at all entrances to your imagination.

Why need I volumes, if one word suffice?

Every writer has his writing technique – what he can and can’t do to describe something like war or history. I’m not good at writing about those things, but I try because I feel it is necessary to write that kind of thing.

It’s probably not an accident that the films that I care about happen to be about issues that matter to me, stories that I want to tell.

All my stories are like the Greek and Roman myths, and the Egyptian myths, and the Old and New Testament.

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

Begin noticing and being careful about keeping your imagination free of thoughts that you do not wish to materialize. Instead, initiate a practice of filling your creative thoughts to overflow with ideas and wishes that you fully intend to manifest. Honor your imaginings regardless of others seeing them as crazy or impossible.

Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world.

With action films, it’s great if it’s not just driven by action, but by a good story and interesting characters, as well. Though, there’s nothin‘ like kicking butt!

A great value of antiquity lies in the fact that its writings are the only ones that modern men still read with exactness.

Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.

I always wrote poetry and stuff like that, so putting songs together wasn’t that spectacular.

The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.

‚The Lion‘ all began with a picture of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself, ‚Let’s try to make a story about it.‘

I like telling stories, and I tell stories that interest me. It would be boring to have to go to nothing but the best restaurants. That would be a misery to me.

The soul never thinks without a picture.

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

When I start to write, I don’t have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come.

I read all the time, and I’m often struck by something I’m reading.

When a family film is done well, there’s a character that every member of the audience can relate to. I want to be one of those guys.

Tell the truth, but tell it slant.

The influence of ‚Hidden Fortress‘ comes up a lot because it was printed in a book once. The truth is, the only thing I was inspired by was the fact that it’s told from the point of view of two peasants, who get mixed up with a samurai and princess and a lot of very high-level people.

The first stories I wrote when I was 12 were about Mars and landing on Mars.