Ian Watson Quotes

I'm a lover of film and storytelling. I believe that I was put on earth to tell stories, and I'm not interested in telling the same stories over and over and over again.

To tell a good story and to illuminate the world: the two things are completely linked. That is the point. That is what I've always wanted to do.

Poets are always ahead of things in a certain way, their sense of language and their vision.

Through a painting we can see the whole world.

I want my art to make people look at the world in a new way. I mean, what's the point of the art of writing if it doesn't take you into the mysterious?

He brought imagination to the story of the Creation.

When you have a character to work with, you carry them around in a strange way - they make you look at the world in a different way.

There are so many avenues to explore and stories to tell. It's just about finding new ways of telling them.

As an aspiring artist, you should strive for originality of vision. Have something to say and a fresh way of saying it. No story is worth the writing, no picture worth the making, if it’s not the work of the imagination.

For me, the novel is experience illumined by imagination.

There is a part of me that has to depend on fantasy, because if you can't be somewhat of a fantasy person, then you can't write

A director is a man, therefore he has ideas; he is also an artist, therefore he has imagination. Whether they are good or bad, it seems to me that I have an abundance of stories to tell. And the things I see, the things that happen to me, continually renew the supply.

When I write stories I am like someone who is in her own country, walking along streets that she has known since she was a child, between walls and trees that are hers.

Sri Lanka is a part of my background: it's not where I live, but it's what I want to explore. And I find it works very well to explore through fiction.

If you sing beautifully about nothing, no one will listen. If you sing badly about great stuff, no one will listen. Ideas are everywhere, but my theory is that a writer doesn't just think of an idea: they perform them.

I try to give people a different way of looking at their surroundings. That's art to me.

The story I am writing exists, written in absolutely perfect fashion, some place, in the air. All I must do is find it, and copy it.

People sometimes ask who I would cast in my books and I never have any idea. I don't think I could ever write a book thinking of it as a movie the whole time. This would be like building a house and filling it with furniture just so you could have blueprints.

I do not understand how on earth you can become a writer without seeing the world.

The ideas of the great playwrights are almost always larger than the experiences of even the best actors.

There is no such thing as an artist - only the world, lit or unlit, as the world allows.

Even the worst book can give us something to think about.

One day I had an idea for a movie. Everything came after that.

As a novelist, you could say that I am dreaming while I am awake, and every day I can continue with yesterday's dream. Because it is a dream, there are so many contradictions and I have to adjust them to make the story work. But, in principle, the original dream does not change.

I ask questions. I watch the world. And what I have discovered is that the parts of my fiction that people most tell me are 'unbelievable' are those that are most closely based on the real, those least diluted by my imagination.