Quotes about Imagination

That 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.

Good writing is true writing. If a man is making a story up it will be true in proportion to the amount of knowledge of life that he has and how conscientious he is; so that when he makes something up it is as it would truly be.

This book is fiction, but there is always a chance that such a work of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact.

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.

There are always mystical countries that are a part of one's childhood. Those we remember and visit sometimes when we are asleep and dreaming. They are as lovely at night as they were when we were children. If you ever go back to see them they are not there. But they are as fine in the night as they ever were if you have the luck to dream of them.

Tolstoi made the writing of Stephen Crane on the Civil War seem like the brilliant imagining of a sick boy who had never seen war but had only read the battles and chronicles and seen the Brady

You saw fear and apprehension. The fear was made by what he had been through. The apprehension was for the possibility of evil he imagined.

Where do the noses go? I always wondered where the noses would go.

Can you imagine anyone making wine because it tastes like strawberries?

You ought to dream," Bill said. "All our biggest business men have been dreamers. Look at Ford. Look at President Coolidge. Look at Rockefeller. Look at Jo Davidson.

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened.

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.