Alan Dean Foster Quotes

I had this desire to see the world. I couldn't see any of it, but I saw it in my imagination, and that's why I always read books, and I could go to Mars or Middle Earth or the Hyborian age.

When you're a little kid, you are small, your life is small - and you're terrifically aware of that. But when you read, you can ride Arabian horses across the desert, you can be a dogsledder.

There's books that are about places we will never go, and then there's books that inspire us to go.

I've always liked stories. I'm always reading, ever since I was a kid. I've always been reading and wanting to be in some other world.

When I was a kid, I read the science-fiction shelves, and I read the fantasy shelves.

When I was thirteen, I was in a supermarket with my mother, and for no reason at all, I picked up a science-fiction book at the checkout stand and started reading it. I couldn't believe I was doing that, actually reading a book. And, man, it opened up a whole new thing. Reading became the sparkplug of my imagination.

There was part of me that wanted to see the world and travel to distant places, but I could only do it in my imagination, so I read ferociously and imagined things.

Buy an atlas and keep it by the bed - remember you can go anywhere.

People love to be swept off their feet, to go into an environment where they've never been, to experience things they only dream about. And filmmaking offers that potential.

Children live in a world filled with possibilities. Their thoughts roam without boundaries, like dreams – full of images, places and actions. Unlike adults, they can’t temper their imaginations with experience. So, when a child plays with a toy or reads a story, it becomes an adventure, a new reality to them.

I like to read, even though it was really tough, because I could go anywhere in the world in a book, and I could have so many adventures in a book.

I just love stories, and I love movies, learning and seeing the world. Growing up in Iowa, it was like, you wanna see the world? Movies can help you do that.

I shall always be able to come up with new fantasies. As long as there are people walking around in the street, as long as I have books to read and windows to look out of, I'm not going to use them up.

I grew up in a small town in India, but through books I knew the world.

There is that romanticized idea of what a bookstore can be, what a library can be, what a shop can be. And to me, they are that. These are places that open doors into other worlds if only you're open to them.

Because some of my at-home life was rough and lonely, I often looked to escape into my imagination. Science fiction provided a deep well to pull from and was something easily accessible to me.

I think that writers of literary fiction would do well to read more books for children.

We never had books at home, but my dad, seeing how keen I was to read, took me to Islington Library when I was about eight and we pulled out two - a Biggles and a science fiction novel. I never got the ace fighter pilot but fell in love with all things to do with the future and space. Isaac Asimov soon became my guiding star.

No place is boring, if you've had a good night's sleep and have a pocket full of unexposed film.

When I'm in a place like Iceland, I allow myself to take a little more time to divert off onto other paths creatively for a while and see what comes to me.

As a kid I read Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, and a few others. As an adult have admired Leonardo da Vinci's drawings and notebooks.

I can create countries just as I can create the actions of my characters. That is why a lot of travel seems to me a waste of time.

I've been a traveller, but I don't travel so much now. I'm trying to do it vicariously through my writing. I'm trying to write books that will draw readers away from their lives but send them back in a more awakened way.

When I was a teenager, reading for me was as normal, as unremarkable as eating or breathing. Reading gave flight to my imagination and strengthened my understanding of the world, the society I lived in, and myself. More importantly, reading was fun, a way to live more than one life as I immersed myself in each good book I read.

When Ellen Datlow was running the fiction at 'Omni' in the late '80s and into the '90s, I had a subscription. It was one of two subscriptions I'd saved for, the other being 'Spider-Man.' And they each opened my mind and my heart in wonderful ways.