"People don't read any more. It's a sad state of affairs. Reading's the only thing that allows you to use your imagination. When you watch films it's someone else's vision, isn't it?"

[Interview in <i>The Independent</i>, 15 October 2005]

What is the use of a book without pictures or conversations?

-Alice in Wonderland

I think imagination is at the heart of everything we do. Scientific discoveries couldn't have happened without imagination. Art, music, and literature couldn't exist without imagination. And so anything that strengthens imagination, and reading certainly does that, can help us for the rest of our lives.

Imagination means nothing without doing.

Imagination means nothing without doing.

With imagination, you can put something where nothing was.

If you occasionally wonder how I know about some of the events I describe in this book, I don't. I have found that — just as in real life — imagination sometimes has to stand in for experience.

I have found that — just as in real life — imagination sometimes has to stand in for experience.

I'll borrow of imagination what reality will not give me.

Do unto others as they wish, but with imagination.

Those who lack imagination have no choice but to base their conclusions on the reality they see around them. But on the other hand, those who are imaginative have a tendency to build fortified castles they have designed themselves, and to seal off every window in them.

I tell you I can’t read a book, but I can read de people.

Want of imagination makes things unreal enough to be destroyed. By imagination I mean knowledge and love. I mean compassion. People of power kill children, the old send the young to die, because they have no imagination. They have power. Can you have power and imagination at the same time? Can you kill people you don’t know and have compassion for them at the same time?

Through imagination, we can visualize the uncredited worlds of potential that lie within us.