Wallace Stegner Quotes

Every new concept first comes to the mind in a judgment.

Thought is the parent of the deed.

All action results from thought, so it is thoughts that matter.

A thought functions only as a fragmentary part in the formulation of an idea.

Ideas are information taking shape.

To have ideas is to gather flowers; to think is to weave them into garlands.

A thought is an idea in transit.

You'd be surprised how hard it can often be to translate an action into an idea.

The hardest thing is the idea. Ideas come from somewhere but as far as we know they come from nowhere.

I write to discover what I think. After all, the bars aren't open that early.

Feelings are at the basis of all ideas. First you have feelings, and then, through those sensations, it develops into ideas.

What interests me about thoughts is not the moment when it crystallises into formal ideas but its earlier stages.

It's always a mystery to me, I have to confess. I've never been able to witness the birth of an idea. It seems as if one second, there's nothing particularly going on, and the next second, something is there.

Most writing doesn’t take place on the page; it takes place in your head.

There was never anything that did not proceed from a thought.

Thought is prior to language and consists in the simultaneous presentation to the mind of two different images.

Ideas are cheap. I have more ideas now than I could ever write up. To my mind, it's the execution that is all-important.

Words are not the end of thought, they are where it begins.

You're bound to get idears if you go thinkin' about stuff

Thought engenders thought. Place one idea on paper, another will follow it, and still another, until you have written a page; you cannot fathom your mind. There is a well of thought which has no bottom; the more you draw from it, the more clear and fruitful it will be.

The constructions of language, which is to say the constructions of thought, are formed within experience, not the other way around.

Every piece of technology, every piece of art, basically everything manmade comes from an idea.

Feeling is what you get for thinking the way you do.

Thinking... is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas

I keep on having ideas and developments. Some happen and some don't, but I still always have a way of telling a story.