Hilary Mantel Quotes

I used to think that when I set out that doing the research was enough! But then the gaps would emerge that could only be filled by the imagination. And imagination only comes when you privilege the subconscious, when you make delay and procrastination work for you.

I consider creativity to be a more non-rational, subconscious thing. You have a relationship to your creativity - you can feed it with content, with some rational prodding and sleep and things like that, but the mechanisms by which your creativity work are largely unknown.

The unconscious is our best collaborator.

Of course creativity is a mystery. We don't know what drives it or what constitutes it. It's one of those things, like genius, you know it when you see it but it's impossible to define.

Man is a genius when he is dreaming.

Method is much, technique is much, but inspiration is even more.

The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.

Ideas are all around you - everything gives you ideas. But the real source is the part of your brain that dreams.

Imagination is the air of mind.

The waking mind is the least serviceable in the arts.

One way we can enliven the imagination is to push it toward the illogical. We're not scientists. We don't always have to make the logical, reasonable leap.

Vision is the true creative rhythm.

You think about the beauty and what you want to transmit. If I think about designing, I can't design.

If I wait for the genius to come, it just doesn't arrive.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

I don't know where I got the idea for 'The Great Thumbprint Drawing Book'; I just told my brain to think of a book, and it did.

Imagination has rules, but we can only guess what they are.

Composing is sort of an intuitive act. You have to put yourself in the right frame of mind.

I just kind of conjured them up out of my subconscious and put them in order of ascending peculiarity.

I do not 'get' ideas; ideas get me.

It is the mystery of the creative act that something other than our conscious self takes over.

The creative process is not controlled by a switch you can simply turn on or off; it's with you all the time.

My best investment is my imagination, because it has never failed to bring me my greatest returns!

Sometimes, to stimulate your imagination you have to be careful you don't have too much information. You can Google something, and it's in your face, pow! You don't have time to dream any more about it.

You can catch a scent in the wind - an idea, or a concept - and follow it. You can delve into your subconscious and see what happens, in a way you just can't when you're writing a novel.