Jean Rhys Quotes

I think that the greatest gift God ever gave man is not the gift of sight but the gift of vision. Sight is a function of the eyes, but vision is a function of the heart.

Art is an aspect of God and there is only one God, but different people see Him in different ways. Though He is always the same He doesn't always look the same.

I don't spend that much time being introspective, believe it or not. All I know is that I grew up not questioning God because that's how you are. God was there like the birds and the wind.

If you're so afraid of your imagination that you stifle it, how are you going to know God? How can you imagine heaven?

Children see things very well sometimes - and idealists even better.

I always love writing about children.

I never go to temples, but when I see a child, I see God in them.

Like children all over the world, by the age of 10 I'd come to believe that most of the really humane creatures were not really human at all.

Art is elemental. Reason alone as it's expressed in the sciences can't be man's complete answer to reality, and it can't express everything that man can, wants to, and has to express. I think God built this into man. Art along with science is the highest gift God has given him.

It is the childlike mind that finds the kingdom.

All art really does is keep you focused on questions of humanity, and it really is about how do we get on with our maker.

All children are born Atheists; they have no idea of God.

I believe God is a poet; every religion in our history was made of poems and songs, and not a few of them had books attached.

The child race is fresh, eager, interested, innocent, imaginative, healthy and full of faith, where the adult race, more often than not, is stale, spiritually debauched, unimaginative, unhealthy, and without faith.

The epicenter of creativity and imagination should be the Church, reflecting the character and glory of God.

Children find everything in nothing; men find nothing in everything.

To write for children at all is an act of faith.

One reason nearly half my books are for children is the glorious fact that the minds of children are still open to the living word; in the child, nightside and sunside are not yet separated; fantasy contains truths which cannot be stated in terms of proof.

For me, art is a more trustworthy expression of God than religion.

Children know perfectly well that unicorns aren’t real, but they also know that books about unicorns, if they are good books, are true books.

Unlike television, reading does not swallow the senses or dictate thought. Reading stimulates the ecology of the imagination. Can you remember the wonder you felt when first reading The Jungle Book or Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn? Kipling’s world within a world; Twain’s slow river, the feel of freedom and sand on the secret island, and in the depths of the cave?

The magic of childhood is the strangeness of childhood — the uniqueness that makes us see things that other people don't see.

Literature ... is the rediscovery of childhood.

Faith isn't an act of intelligence, it's an act of imagination.

I’ve never intended to make religious records or records that preach some kind of point of view... If you’re involved with imagination and the creative process, it’s not such a difficult thing to believe in a god. But I’m not involved in any religions.