Aimee Bender Quotes

I loved the world of imagination.

A novel is what you dream in your night sleep. A novel is not waking thoughts although it is written and thought with waking thoughts.

Part of my function as a writer is to dream awake. And that usually happens. If I sit down to write in the morning, in the beginning of that writing session and the ending of that session, I'm aware that I'm writing. I'm aware of my surroundings. It's like shallow sleep on both ends, when you go to bed and when you wake up. But in the middle, the world is gone and I'm able to see better.

Daydreaming had started me on the way; but story writing once I was truly in its grip, took me and shook me awake.

There is a part of me that has to depend on fantasy, because if you can't be somewhat of a fantasy person, then you can't write

When I'm writing I don't dream much; it's like the dreaming gets used in the writing.

As an author, I've never forgotten how to daydream.

A work of fiction is conceived very much the same way as a dream occurs in the mind of a sleeper. But a lot of it is imagination. It's not based on real people.

Literature for me isn't a workaday job, but something which involves desires, dreams and fantasy.

For me, writing a novel is like having a dream. Writing a novel lets me intentionally dream while I'm still awake. I can continue yesterday's dream today, something you can't normally do in everyday life.

A story in your head isn't a story. It's just a daydream until you actually write it down. So write it down.

In terms of the symbolism, I think that if you do it right, writing is a bit like dreaming.

I'm constantly creating and writing.

I always had stories inside my head and one day I just decided to start writing them down. I didn't actually decide.

His stories are good to hear at night, because we can dream about them asleep; and good in the morning, too, because then we can dream about them awake. (Cowslip)

Use your imagination. Trust me, your lives are not interesting. Don't write them down.

Creative writing teachers should be purged until every last instructor who has uttered the words 'Write what you know' is confined to a labor camp. Please, talented scribblers, write what you don't. The blind guy with the funny little harp who composed The Iliad, how much combat do you think he saw?

Writing is like meditation or going into an ESP trance, or prayer. Like dreaming. You are tapping into your unconscious. To be fully conscious and alert, with life banging and popping and cuckooing all around, you are not going to find your way to your subconscious, which is a place of complete submission.

Writing songs is no different than explaining to somebody what you dreamed last night: No one ever gives you crap for what you dreamed last night. "I was laying in my bed, and all of a sudden a stallion jumped on my bed and the next thing I know I was in Mars but it looked like my kitchen"... That's kind of what I do with my songs, write them in a dream-like manner. It's up to people to swallow it however they want.

He who passes not his days in the realm of dreams is the slave of the days.

A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.

Writing is only a guided dream.

A novelist is on the cusp between someone who knows everything and someone who knows nothing.

The good thing about writing books is that you can dream while you are awake. If it’s a real dream, you cannot control it. When writing the book, you are awake; you can choose the time, the length, everything. I write for four or five hours in the morning and when the time comes, I stop. I can continue the next day. If it’s a real dream, you can’t do that.

Writers do not write what they know. They write what they can imagine.