Diana Wynne Jones Quotes

Maybe there's a sense that technology isn't necessarily the answer to a lot of our problems. Fantasy offers readers a less radically alienated world - a world where desires and feelings that normally are trapped inside your mind are made real in the form of magic.

[Mathematics] unceasingly calls forth the faculties of observation and comparison; one of its principal weapons is induction: it has frequent recourse to trial and verification; and it affords a boundless scope for the exercise of the highest efforts of imagination and invention.

Finally, it is important to make it clear that imagination is not an exercise for those detached from reality, those who live in the air. On the contrary, when we imagine something, we do it necessarily conditioned by a lack in our concrete reality. When children imagine free and happy schools, it is because their real schools deny them freedom and happiness.

My lack of access to the real world has been replaced completely by books, and it can’t be healthy to live in a land of happily ever afters.

Often we use the word problem only because we have not learned that imagination and creativity can handle the situation.

Only creativity can see past problems to find solutions. This holds true for every area of life.

Talking to people makes me feel like sleeping. Only my ghostly and imaginary friends, only the conversations I have in my dreams, are genuinely real and substantial.

Reading fiction not only develops our imagination and creativity, it gives us the skills to be alone. It gives us the ability to feel empathy for people we've never met, living lives we couldn't possibly experience for ourselves, because the book puts us inside the character's skin.

It's [programming] the only job I can think of where I get to be both an engineer and an artist. There's an incredible, rigorous, technical element to it, which I like because you have to do very precise thinking. On the other hand, it has a wildly creative side where the boundaries of imagination are the only real limitation.

The imagination is how things get done. You have to cultivate creativity.

Who need to read about real life when there's dragons. Come on!

Constraint inspires creativity

The essence of creativity is figuring out how to use what you already know in order to go beyond what you already think.

A book had always been a door to another world... a world much more interesting and fantastical than reality. But she had finally discovered that life could be even more wonderful than fantasy. And that love could fill the real world with magic.

I believe that the imagination is the passport we create to take us into the real world. I believe the imagination is another phrase for what is most uniquely us.

Usually, the main problem with life conundrums is that we don't bring to them enough imagination

Imagination is a valuable asset in business and she has a sister, Understanding, who also serves. Together they make a splendid team and business problems dissolve and the impossible is accomplished by their ministrations.... Imagination concerning the world's wants and the individual's needs should be the Alpha and Omega of self-education.

The problem is not one of prediction. It is one of imagination.

The basis of action is lack of imagination. It is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.

Invention requires both disciplines, strict common sense and wild imagination.

Imagination! My problem is that I have so many ideas, I never have enough time to use them all. Just the other day I thought up eleven things I could do with a flowerpot. Eleven! Three of those things didn't even involve plants.

Creativity, not money, is used to solve problems.

Our imagination it is our greatest ally . . . Imagination is a very, very powerful thing. It literally invents the path before you.

Suddenly creativity is the popular goal. Ironically, a quality dissonant with our conventional education process is greatly in demand in adults - and those who survive the system without losing their creative integrity are richly rewarded. The magic word in a book's title almost ensures sales: Creative Stitchery, Creative Cookery, Creative Gardening. ... Perhaps we are trying to develop something that was innately ours.

If you are creative enough to imagine a problem, you're clever enough to discover a solution.