#nation

Evidently, a given object took no particular amount of time to draw; instead the artist took the time, or didn’t take it, at pleasure. And,similarly, things themselves possessed no fixed and intrinsic amount of interest; instead things were interesting as long as you had attention to give them. How long does it take to draw a baseball mitt? As much time as you care to give it. Not an infinite amount of time, but more time than you first imagined. For many days, so long as you want to keep drawing that mitt, and studying that mitt, there will always be a new and finer layer of distinctions to draw out and lay in. Your attention discovers—seems thereby to produce—an array of interesting features in any object, like a lamp. ↗

— Annie Dillard

#drawing #interest #interesting #imagination

show me your eyes and i should tell who you are and what would your future ↗

— Mohamed Khadra

#imagination

I sometimes wonder if all other animals, all plants, maybe even stars and rivers and rocks, dwell in steady awareness of God, while humans alone, afflicted with self-consciousness, imagine ourselves apart. ↗

— Scott Russell Sanders

#god #imagination

Keep it simple. Trust your imagination. Discover what is unique about your imagination. Don’t simply read a story and copy it. I go into myself. Then I transcribe what visions I have. If those ideas are original, and you are devoted, you will go far. ↗

— Clive Barker

#imagination

If the bishops had not called vain imaginings religion, philosophers would not regard religion as vain imaginings. ↗

— Mirzá Azizu llah-i-Misbáh

#imaginings #philosphers #religion #imagination

Trying to imagine E. M. Forster, who found Ulysses indecorous, at a London performance of Lenny Bruce—to which in fact he was once taken. Trying to imagine the same for a time-transported Nathaniel Hawthorne—who during his first visit to Europe was even shocked by the profusion of naked statues. ↗

— David Markson

#lenny-bruce #m-forster #nathaniel-hawthorne #norms #puritanism

Imagine, if you can, a huge grizzly with ten legs armed with mighty talons and an enormous froglike mouth splitting his head from ear to ear, exposing three rows of long, white tusks. Then endow this creature of your imagination with the agility and ferocity of a half-starved Bengal tiger and the strength of a span of bulls, and you will have some faint conception of Woola in action. ↗

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

#imagination

You have an amazing imagination!" "I Know," I say, smiling back at her. "my head is chock-full of gruesome ideas ↗

— Bonnie Shimko

#imagination

Gately can't even imagine what it would be like to be a sober and drug-free biker. It's like what would be the point. He imagines these people polishing the hell out of their leather and like playing a lot of really precise pool. ↗

— David Foster Wallace

#alcoholics-anonymous #bikers #drugs #recovery #sobriety

They obviously weren't trying to recruit us, which was sort of a shame. I imagined a full unit of vampire soldiers and I got a little giddy, and distracted. Bad idea, maybe. But it'd be epic, wouldn't it? ↗

— Cherie Priest

#imagination