Ethan Canin Quotes

What you make up in your heads sticks if it's good, falls out if it's bad. If we still remember something a day after we made it up, it might be worth building on.

We can invent only with memory.

People seem to have trouble with the imagination. They can't believe that you can just pull things out of your brain like that.

I have an active imagination.

Everything, at first, is an idea, a special creation.

Ideas are all around you - everything gives you ideas. But the real source is the part of your brain that dreams.

Imagination is the air of mind.

Ideas sometimes come from nowhere, and sometimes they take lots of thinking.

I pick up inspiration from everywhere and it all manages to keep stored in my brain somewhere.

I don't get ideas, I have them. The trick is to remember where I've put them.

Invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory; nothing can come of nothing.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

I don't know where I got the idea for 'The Great Thumbprint Drawing Book'; I just told my brain to think of a book, and it did.

The nature of having ideas and creativity is incredibly inspiring.

I want to kick-start your imagination and let you discover the places it can take you.

No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination.

I think we always move from imitation to assimilation to innovation, but I can't name you 20 people outside those we've already recognized who ever got to point three: innovation.

We especially need imagination in science.

Ideas seem to come from everywhere - my life, everything I see, hear, and read, and most of all, from my imagination. I have a lot of imagination.

I mean, the most important thing to me is imagination.

Creative thinking inspires ideas. Ideas inspire change.

Ideas are the root of creation.

Recent studies have shown that our creativity is increased by 60% when we're walking. I encourage my workshop participants to write at their desks but think on their feet.

I'm a big fan of imagination. I think it's the strongest tool we have, and there are some things that you just can't practice.

If you will give the matter a moment's thought, you'll see that memory is the highest faculty of the human mind.