Anthony Doerr Quotes

I love the idea of things being strict and things being uniform. That's the reason why I surround each collection with humor or irony. I want to make sure that it's not too serious and that there is some element that throws it off because otherwise that would make it really boring. There's always a story that's somewhat fantastical.

I definitely love fantasy and would want to be in a fantasy project.

When I wrote 'The Good Fairies of New York,' I wasn't really imagining that there were fairies. Not in the way that I'm really imagining there are werewolves.

I have always been a romantic, one of those people who believes that a woman in pink circus tights contains all the secrets of the universe.

Fantasy is my heart and love. And I just want to play in that garden for the rest of my life.

I like that 'once upon a time' quality, where the telling of a tale has an elevated sense of story. There's a whimsical quality to it. Sometimes in fairy tales more things seem possible, even though often they're real world based.

I love anything that's sort of surreal and with fantasy.

There is art and beauty and power in the primal images of fantasy.

There aren't that many monsters. It's very hard to create a new monster.

If I wasn't a singer, I would be a fairy princess.

I just like magical, fantastical stuff. I don't really see it as surreal when I'm writing. It's just, I write, and then I have an idea, and usually, they're quite odd.

The fairies, as their custom, clapped their hands with delight over their cleverness, and they were so madly in love with the little house that they could not bear to think they had finished it.

I desired dragons with a profound desire. Of course, I in my timid body did not wish to have them in the neighborhood. But the world that contained even the imagination of Fáfnir was richer and more beautiful, at whatever the cost of peril.

There’s a great expression in Twelve Step programs: Act as if. Act as if you’re a writer. Sit down and begin. Act as if you might just create something beautiful, and by beautiful I mean something authentic and universal. Don’t wait for anybody to tell you it’s okay. Take that shimmer and show us our humanity. That’s your job.

Being creative means first of all doing something unusual... On the other hand, however unusual it may be, the idea also has to be reasonable for people to take it seriously.

- But Abraham, you mean I'm supposed to make stuff up !?!? - You are creators, you make stuff up all the time!

I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities.

With knowledge, our creation can go in any direction - from the worst kind of drama, to the most beautiful dream. Then the best way to express our creativity is with love and awareness of what we really are.

Our ideas are the offspring of our senses; we are not more able to create the form of a being we have not seen, without retrospect to one we know, than we are able to create a new sense. He whose fancy has conceived an idea of the most beautiful form must have composed it from actual existence.

Endeavoring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites in us, just as trying to sleep with someone may be the bluntest response to a feeling of love.

Children are natural mythologists: they beg to be told tales, and love not only to invent but to enact falsehoods.

Love is full of imagination.

I loved something I made up

Normal means lack of imagination and creativity.