Edmund White Quotes

Mere imagination would indeed be mere trifling; only no imagination is mere .

The imagination is the power that enables us to perceive the normal in the abnormal, the opposite of chaos in chaos.

Imagination seems to be a glory and a misery, a blessing and a curse. Adam, to his sorrow, lacked it. Eve, to her sorrow, possessed it. Had both been blessed - or cursed - with it, there would have been much keener competition for the apple.

What we call imagination is actually the universal library of what's real. You couldn’t imagine it if it weren’t real somewhere, sometime.

Imagination is usually regarded as a synonym for the unreal. Yet is true imagination healthful and real, no more likely to mislead than the coarse senses. Indeed, the power of imagination makes us infinite.

If you can imagine a thing, conjure it up in space then you can make it... The universe is real but you can't see it. You have to imagine it. Then you can be realistic about reproducing it.

Imagination is a powerful agent for creating, as it were, a second nature out of the material supplied to it by actual nature.

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.

I don't understand the process of imagination-though I know that I am very much at its mercy.

Imagination comes in after we have experience.

The imagination is too often regarded merely as an indefinite, untraceable, indescribable something that does nothing but create fiction.

Sometimes it's just enough for me to have the idea. I don't need to see it through to the end. When it actually happens, I'm always disappointed because it's never like what I imagined in my head. When an idea becomes a reality, then it's a job. I'd rather just think about it.

The paradox of reality is that no image is as compelling as the one which exists only in the mind's eye.

Some people could look at a mud puddle and see an ocean with ships.

Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend those things which are there.

Imagination is the will of things. . . .

The facts, even the real ones, must be imagined before they can be stated.

Imagination is the power of the mind over the possibilities of things.

My foregrounds are imaginary, my backgrounds real.

The most important dreams occur while people are fully awake.

How can you see something that isn't there?" yawned the Humbug, who wasn't fully awake yet. "Sometimes, it's much simpler than seeing things that are,"he said. "For instance, if something is there, you can only see it with your eyes open, but if it isn't there, you can see it just as well with your eyes closed. That's why imaginary things are often easier to see than real ones." "Then where is Reality?" barked Tock. "Right here,"cried Alec, waving his arms.

You have to learn to hallucinate.

What is the imagination? Only an arm or weapon of the interior energy; only the precursor of the reason.

My whole art is based on escaping life and reality, which might not the best tendency to have when you're trying to be a good person in general. But people can escape into my world easily - artists are supposed to create a keyhole that people can look into.

Imagination is a powerful force underlying all knowing