Jennifer Yuh Nelson Quotes

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

People seem to have trouble with the imagination. They can't believe that you can just pull things out of your brain like that.

You have something that exists in your head, and getting that abstract thought from your head into something that actually exists is a difficult process.

If I can't picture it, I can't understand it.

An image is a stop the mind makes between uncertainties.

But I don't sit down at dinner and have clever ideas.

Everything, at first, is an idea, a special creation.

I just get silly inside my head and I start to think about something and in my head I start twisting it around, contorting it and envisioning it in different ways.

First comes thought; then organization of that thought, into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is in your imagination.

When I multiply numbers together, I see two shapes. The image starts to change and evolve, and a third shape emerges. That's the answer. It's mental imagery. It's like maths without having to think.

That's the way I work: I try to imagine what I would like to see.

Visualization is daydreaming with a purpose.

Whatever man does he must do first in his mind.

My mind sort of works like a search engine. You ask me something, and I start seeing pictures.

The soul never thinks without a picture.

Language for me narrates the pictures in my mind.

A lot of times, you have an idea, and all the things you are thinking about might fuel it. But that's not where the idea came from.

Human beings are creators, flinging powerful images into the minds of their fellow men. And all of these images are built of tiny particles of thought.

There is no secret orchard where ideas grow. Oh my, do I wish there were.

Even though people think I am more of a conceptual artist, I am actually very intuitive. For me, it is still a matter of allowing things to naturally rise to the top of my mental pile, and then I make them.

Sometimes, I believe I actually see the wheels in my brain turning.

It's sort of a mystery where ideas come from.

When I'm problem-solving with something, I have, effectively, a CAD program in my head that's like a room that has specific qualities to it that I go to some deal of effort to populate. Textures and smells, something like that.

My mind jumbles things, reassembles them, and plays with words without even being asked.

Everything I think is in pictures.