Creative Speculation Quotes

In exploring new and doubtful tracts of speculation, the mind strikes out true and original views; as a drop of water hesitates at first what direction it will take, but afterwards follows its own course.

There's not an emperor or artist out there I won't read a medical history of, even if - or especially if - the author uses that medical history to spin out wild counterfactuals about how wars or masterpieces might have turned out differently. They're like delicious philosophical mints to roll around inside your mouth, just to see how they taste.

When the great innovation appears, it will almost certainly be in muddled, incomplete and confusing form. ... For any speculation which does not at first glance look crazy, there is no hope.

Most of the crackpot papers which are submitted to The Physical Review are rejected, not because it is impossible to understand them, but because it is possible. Those which are impossible to understand are usually published. When the great innovation appears, it will almost certainly be in a muddled, incomplete and confusing form. To the discoverer himself it will be only half-understood; to everybody else it will be a mystery. For any speculation which does not at first glance look crazy, there is no hope.

I have a theory about Ireland, being at the edge of Europe. For 1,000 years, people didn't know what was beyond. But we thought about it - a lot. And that 'beyond' became internalized in our psyche.

What if Picasso had gone to the Moon? Or Andy Warhol or Michael Jackson or John Lennon? What about Coco Chanel? These are all artists that I adore.

I often wonder whether I would have done as well in painting.

Science fiction to me is the ultimate art form, because it speculates on bodies and worlds that don't exist.

I have this tendency to take a little bit of questionable knowledge and riff on it.

It's a waste of time to think that if you colored a painting red what might have happened if you painted it black.

The novel is a territory where one does not make assertions; it is a territory of play and of hypotheses.

One of the great elements of the supernatural is having that mystery and letting people's imaginations run wild with it.

Strange are the pictures of the future that mankind can thus draw with this brush of faith and these many-coloured pigments of the imagination! Strange, too, that no one of them tallies with another!