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"Richard Hugo taught me that anyone with a desire to write, an ear for language and a bit of imagination could become a writer. He also, in a way, gave me permission to write about northern Montana."
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Exlpore more Imagination quotes
"When you are very rational, you may not be able to dream or live in a fairy tale."
"Fairytales are healthy for the children. As they grow up, the magical thinking wears off, but the fairytale-induced creative brain circuits stay forever."
"Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young."
"How crazy it would be if the moon did spin and the earth stood still and the sun went dim!How absolutely ludicrous if snakes could walk and kids could fly and mimes did talk!How silly it would be if the nights were tan and the mornings green and the sun cyan!How totally ridiculous if horses chirped and spiders sang and ladies burped!How shocking it would be if the dragons ruled and the knights were daft but the fish were schooled!How utterly preposterous if rain were dry and snowflakes warm and real men cried!I love to just imagineall the lows as heights,and the salty, sweet,and our lefts as rights.Perhaps it is incredibleand off the hook,but it all makes sensein a storybook!"
"I mean, public libraries like this one were always short of money, so building even the tiniest of labyrinths had to be beyond their means."
"If I had lady-spider legs, I would weave a sky where the stars lined up. Matresses would be tied down tight to their trucks, bodies would never crash through windshields. The moon would rise above the wine-dark sea and give babies only to maidens and musicians who had prayed long and hard. Lost girls wouldn't need compasses or maps. They would find gingerbread paths to lead them out of the forest and home again. They would never sleep in silver boxes with white velvet sheets, not until they were wrinkled-paper grandmas and ready for the trip."
"A tree house, to me, is the most royal palace in the world."
"You can do more with a castle in a story than with the best cardboard castle that ever stood on a nursery table."
"The world cannot be translated, It can only be dreamed of and touched."
"There was a moment of silence as they imagined a future in which there existed an organisation that stole imagination for, undoubtedly, a sinister plan."
Explore more quotes by James Welch
"My poems were just kind of all over the place. They had no focus, no location, nothing. Kind of a series of images that could have been set anywhere. A lot of the poems were just exercises for myself."
"In a lot of Indian societies, spirituality has been lost, I think it's still the best way of looking at the world for Indians - better than any organized religion in this country."
"I used to object to being called an Indian writer, and would always say I was a writer who happened to be an Indian, and who happened to write about Indians."
"The title of the poems was The Only Bar in Dixon. We sent it out to The New Yorker on a fluke, and they took them and printed all three in the same issue."
"I wander around, get the lay of the land and try to imagine what kind of people would have lived there in that historical period. What would they eat? What kind of clothing would they wear? How did they shelter themselves? How did they get around?"
"The economic piece is still missing, since it's so hard to attract industry to reservations, but spiritually and educationally, they're doing just fine. Each tribe has a community college now, and they teach the language, they teach the traditions."
"Before, Indian people had been so defeated, they were always looking for outsiders, for the government, to somehow come in and fix things. But now, they seem to realize that they're the only ones who can save themselves."
"Nobody would take checks from Indians, nobody would give them any credit, and nobody would let them drink in the bars. There was a rudeness, a brusqueness, with which the Indians were treated constantly. At a very young age, that had entered my consciousness."
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