I think humans have always felt watched back by whatever is out there flickering in the distance. What excites me is what the imagination creates, not simply in explanation of what is there but also to explain or justify the feeling of awe and attachment that the heavens inspire.

Life-writing calls for any number of dubious gifts: A touch of O.C.D., a lack of imagination, a large desk, neutrality of Swiss proportions, tactlessness, a high tolerance for archival dust. Most of all it calls for an act of displacement. 'To find your subject, you must in some sense lose yourself along the way,' is Richard Holmes's version.

I probably became an actor because of my vivid imagination, and doing voice-over really sort of takes me back to that.

Fairy tales opened up a door into my imagination - they don't conform to the reality that's around you as a child. I started reading when I was three and read everything, but I wanted to be an actress.

Imagination is not the exclusive appanage of artists, but belongs in varying degrees to all men.

When I was thirteen, I was in a supermarket with my mother, and for no reason at all, I picked up a science-fiction book at the checkout stand and started reading it. I couldn't believe I was doing that, actually reading a book. And, man, it opened up a whole new thing. Reading became the sparkplug of my imagination.

I loved the world of imagination.

Imagination comes of not having things.

Just about this time, when in imagination I was so great a warrior, I had good use in real life for more strength, as I was no longer taken to school by the nurse, but instead had myself to protect my brother, two years my junior.

I think the thing that I really wanna bring is that I have a full world of music and imagination and ideas that I want to create as an artist, and that's my main thing that I want to do.

For decades, the men at Area 51 thought they'd take their secrets to the grave. At the height of the Cold War, they cultivated anonymity while pursuing some of the country's most covert projects. Conspiracy theories were left to popular imagination.

I've always had an active imagination.

I believe in the imagination. What I cannot see is infinitely more important than what I can see.

Americans rightly, but sometimes excessively, celebrate every person in uniform as a hero, but seldom honor the difficult and often dangerous work being done day after day by members of our diplomatic corps. Warriors capture the popular imagination more easily than peacemakers.

The costume that I wear on the show is a little snug and doesn't leave a whole lot to the imagination. I don't have a problem with it because of the way this character's been written.

Well, the fact is that one imagination is critically important, and if you have had your imagination stimulated by what is basically a variety of subjects, you are much more amenable to accepting, to understanding and interacting with the realities of the world.

For us artists there waits the joyous compromise through art with all that wounded or defeated us in daily life; in this way, not to evade destiny, as the ordinary people try to do, but to fulfil it in its true potential - the imagination.

Self-awareness is not the same thing as self-approval, any more than imagination is the same thing as day-dreaming.

Reading a hard copy book, and reading a book on an iPad are slightly different experiences. What they both have in common though is that you must engage your imagination in the process.

It's definitely true that there are a lot of the devices we used on 'Star Trek,' that came out the imagination of the writers, and the creators that are actually in the world today.

I first came across the script for 'Macbeth' between the ages of 11 and 12; it was the first book that shook my life. Because I did not yet understand that I could simply purchase it in a bookstore, I copied much of it by hand and took it home. My childhood imagination pushed me to feel like a co-author of the play.

It's the idea that anticipation is as scary as anything in a movie could be. People's imagination is the most effective tool in creating terror or dread.

Authors are ordinary people who usually start to live apart, in the imagination, because they don't fit in with normal, healthy people.

In writing my historical novels, I have to rely upon my imagination to a great extent. I think of it as 'filling in the blanks.' Medieval chroniclers could be callously indifferent to the needs of future novelists. But I think there is a great difference between filling in the blanks and distorting known facts.

Further, for once, I like the idea that people who think I'm a constant voice for the furthering of the imagination have to see that interest in a more materialistic fashion.

By going over your day in imagination before you begin it, you can begin acting successfully at any moment.

Yes, I was correctly quoted in saying I introduced sex into films in the 20's, but it was sex in good taste and left a great deal to one's imagination.

I don't know what the next American revolution is going to be like, but we might be able to imagine it if your imagination were rich enough.

Heaven knows, I've exposed myself in my novels through the use of fantasy and imagination... now my new book is about what really happened to me... not my heroines.

The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.

What we imagine is order is merely the prevailing form of chaos.

Agnes Varda changed my view of cinema; she directs from an artistic point of view, and a film is most of all the expression of an artistic director. I learnt to enter the world and the imagination of a director.

I am better able to imagine hell than heaven; it is my inheritance, I suppose.