No matter what you write, you need an active imagination.

Ideas come from life: what happens in mine, what I see happening in others', mixed with a great deal of imagination. I might see a person in a grocery store and build a whole character and life out of what's in her basket.

Some people read an interesting or provocative newspaper article, and that's the end of that. A writer reads such an article, and her imagination gets fired up. Questions occur to her. She might feel an urge to finish the story that the article suggests.

When I'm working on one book, part of my imagination is thinking ahead to the next one.

I don't necessarily start with the beginning of the book. I just start with the part of the story that's most vivid in my imagination and work forward and backward from there.

Life is possible only by the deficiencies of our imagination and memory.

To think, and to feel, constitute the two grand divisions of men of genius - the men of reasoning and the men of imagination.

Storybooks were always a big part of my imagination, and my childhood and adolescence.

Many hedge fund managers have become billionaires; perhaps this - plus their reputations as the smartest guys in the room - is why they have captured the investing public's imagination.

Imagination is the air of mind.

There's no reason for your imagination to be fettered by money.

I have a very strong imagination and have since I was a little kid. That is where a lot of my world comes from. It's like I'm off somewhere else. And I can have a problem in life because of that, because I'm always off in some other world thinking about something else. It's constant.

The object of religion is the imagination, that deep and inexhaustible font of our understanding and symbolizing our deepest possibilities.

I suspect that one of capitalism's crucial assets derives from the fact that the imagination of economists, including its critics, lags well behind its own inventiveness, the arbitrariness of its undertaking and the ruthlessness of the way in which it proceeds.

I have learned the art of filling in your lines with your visuals and your movies and your imagination.

When a child's mind develops and is heading in a certain direction, we murder that mentality, we murder that imagination, by saying, 'Now, that is all well and good, but now sit down and start to study.'

I sometimes think that so much of our life takes place inside our heads - in memory or imagination or interpretation or speculation - that if I really want to change my life, I might best begin by changing my mind.

Believing you're something that you're not excites the mind and the imagination. And it's hopeful.

For me, drawing is a way of navigating the imagination, and it remains the fundamental vehicle of my practice. Drawing allows me to be at my most inventive.

Whoever has once been truly unsettled by a work of the imagination will never give loyalty to a single idea, belief system, religious faith or party.

Not everyone is fortunate enough to earn their living playing. But what draws people to art and artists is a desire to enjoy the propinquity of play. For it is the very freedom of the imagination. And what else were we born to do, but imagine freely?

If you create a visual that actually captures the imagination, that's not real. It will look real, and that will spread at such lightning speed that by the time it's found out, it has already done its damage. It's a very, very scary time that we're living in. I say it's an age of absurdity.

Because of my faith and my imagination, I was able to enjoy my childhood, even though it was tough.

Companies like Google and Facebook may offer jobs allowing or requiring imagination and creativity, but the whole of Silicon Valley accounts for only 3 percent of national income and a smaller percentage of national employment.

You - and I have to remind myself of this - are capable beyond your wildest imagination.

People know that they're going to see something which is entertaining but challenging as well because of the form it's in. It's dance theatre and it requires you to use your imagination - it's not straight forward.

In acting, every day is different, and I guess it appeals to my storytelling imagination. But I've been very fortunate to get the chance to do what I want to do and earn a living from it to pay the mortgage.

My hope is that this life is not all there is. This life is like preparation for what is coming next, and what is coming next is something so glorious that the Bible says minds can't conceive it, eye has never seen, your imagination could never even enter into all that God is preparing for those who love him.

As an actor, our very palette is one of imagination. So it is a walk onto an empty space and then imagine the world beyond it is what we do.

I feel like I'm a much better person when I'm developing my imagination and my innocence and my vulnerability. I like that version of me better than the version where I'm just working on my analytical mind.

No film has captivated my imagination more than 'King Kong.' I'm making movies today because I saw this film when I was 9 years old.

'The Lord of the Rings,' published in the mid-1950s, was intended as a prehistory to our own world. It was perceived by Tolkien to be a small but significant episode in a vast alternate mythology constructed entirely out of his own imagination.

I think music took hold of me and captured my imagination at such a formative age that I ascribe a mysteriousness to it, and I exalt it and take it seriously in a way that I think has just permeated my life ever since. And I'm less interested in music that is novelty or jokey or ironic.

Anything that stimulates the public's imagination about the nobility and the importance of space exploration is something that I'm very excited to be a part of.

Everything, I think, about acting is based on imagination.

Most of my interests in terms of writing are dark, so it's discordant how much I try to lock into the vibe of wherever I'm at. Inhabiting the life of the imagination is the nature of survival strategy - you build yourself little worlds to enjoy.

My imagination ran 24/7, and to me, every problem was a challenge to solve and new product to create. It wasn't until I started teaching that I realized that not everyone's head worked the same way.

The map we made of the 3,000-year-old city of Tanis requires no imagination. It has buildings, streets, admin complexes, houses - clear as day.

Children depend mightily on animals for comfort, inspiration, imagination, and art. And parents have long recognized this.

We have defeated Gaddafi on the battlefield; now we must defeat him in our imagination. We must not allow his legacy to corrupt our dream. Let's keep focused on the true prize: unity, democracy, and the rule of law. Let's not seek revenge; that would diminish our future.

I think it was really important for me before I 'debuted myself' in front of the world to have a private life with my imagination and my writing for several years. That also made it so I didn't feel desperate for someone to find me.

I think my imagination dictates the technologies I use. But at the same time, my imagination can be technologic. Sometimes I see a tool and I know immediately how to use it, but most of the time I use the tool for an idea I already have.

I learnt so much wit, really, from the Globe audiences. If you can make a circle, even in a proscenium theater, if you can get a circular energy going, so that all these people are involved with it and present, then there is something curious that happens with the imagination.

Never forget that the truest luxury is imagination, and that being a writer gives you the leeway to exploit all of the imagination's curious intricacies, to be what you were, what you are, what you will be, and what everyone else is or was or will be, too.

I don't think that people should wear dresses two sizes too small. I just think that sexiness is better left to the imagination. It's just more tasteful.

I have never been able to pay attention to anything for more than a few minutes - the stories in my head have always been so much more entertaining. Only books could pull me out of my own imagination, and then it was only to plunge me into someone else's.

Being an actor means asking people to look at you. I guess I accept that. But it's a profession in which the job is to show another world and other people. You may access it through bits of yourself, and your imagination and experience, but actually, in the end, you're not playing yourself.

Politics is the enemy of the imagination.

For a 12-year-old with a hyperactive imagination who liked to dream of dreary gothic castles, suburban Florida felt a little stifling.

There's something magical about a home run. It almost violates the space of the stadium. It's a game of the imagination in some ways. Baseball.