Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes

We all need illusions. That's why we love movies.

Encouraging people to believe in it was the most important thing of all. It's one of the reasons I was always uncomfortable whenever film crews came on the set to shoot things. I didn't want our make-believe to be exposed.

When you have spent an important part of your life playing Let's Pretend, it's often easy to see symbolism where none exists.

I often use hypothetical situations to generate information and imagery for paintings and to create a fictional space where a subject can be put into play.

Magic in cinema is a bit like ventriloquism on the radio.

Anyone who has set out to invent a purely imaginary story knows that the whole thing is fantasy, from beginning to end; there must be a sense of magic created about the most restrained of naturalism.

I think cinema is closer to allegories than to reality. It's closer to our dreams.

Coming back from doing 'The Hobbit,' you think 'Sherlock' is realistic, but of course, it's not that realistic.

Movies are magical. It transcends a lot of hate or human faults in real life because of the fantasy of it all.

People don't like reality, they like crazy stories.

Dream strange things and make them look like truth.

Poetry is a shuffling of boxes of illusions buckled with a strap of facts.

We actually say in 'Nightbreed,' 'God is an astronaut, Oz is over the rainbow, and Midian is where the monsters go.' There's a lovely sense in which there's a simple thesis being played out here. These are things you understand as a child out on the play yard.

I live in my imagination, so sometimes movies help me get lost. I feel like I'm in it.

We want to see ourselves - but differently. We want to see these dream versions of ourselves. We want to be surprised; we want to be entertained. I think primarily, especially in this country, we ask that movies entertain us, which seems to be something they're less and less likely to do on a continual basis.

The circus allows one to be logical and unreal at the same time. In the circus, all is possible: there can be a man with two heads or a character with a green face.

Ghost has always been about make-believe.

I often photograph something as if the subject matter was realistic, but it is actually a fantasy.

Imagining things are there that are not really there, with the green screen, is very much like theatre, when you're looking at the fourth wall.

That's what I love about movies and TV: You can go anywhere any time and be whoever you want.

I feel that entertainment happens when fact and fiction is balanced.

I think that sense of wonderment, where you walk out expecting the ordinary and are confronted by the extraordinary, is something that has always interested me, whether in TV or comic books.

When I watch a movie, I want to be taken away into worlds that are beyond my imagination.

Make believe I'm right.

I see myself as a storyteller. So, when I read something, I see the story, and I see it on screen, in my head, in a certain way. I always want to see it and see me in it.