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"The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future."
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"I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here, I can pretend...I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than moments. Gods come, and gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds don't last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pretend..."

"The imagination is a muscle. If it is not exercised, it atrophies."

"Few people have the imagination for reality."

"But then again, if you don't imagine, nothing ever happens at all. Imagining isn't perfect. You can't get all the way inside someone else. I could never have imagined Margo's anger at being found, or the story she was writing over. But imagining being someone else, or the world being something else, is the only way in."

"I desired dragons with a profound desire. Of course, I in my timid body did not wish to have them in the neighborhood. But the world that contained even the imagination of FA¡fnir was richer and more beautiful, at whatever the cost of peril."

"Says, Rahula! Rahula! Face of Glory! Universe chawed and swallowed!"

"The world cannot be translated, It can only be dreamed of and touched."

"The realm of fairy-story is wide and deep and high and filled with many things: all manner of beasts and birds are found there; shoreless seas and stars uncounted; beauty that is an enchantment, and an ever-present peril; both joy and sorrow as sharp as swords."

"A Halloween flower,if ever there was one,would smell like an onion,have thorns like a rose.With charcoal black petalsand vines that entangle,t'would grow under moonlightin mud, I suppose."

"Dare to imagine. Dare to be. Books are the seeds. Dreams are the soil. The fruit of the harvest, a world reborn."
Explore more quotes by Jessamyn West

"In my time and neighborhood (and in my soul) there was only one standard by which a woman measured success: did some man want her?"

"Faithfulness to the past can be a kind of death above ground. Writing of the past is a resurrection; the past then lives in your words and you are free."

"We want the facts to fit the preconceptions. When they don't it is easier to ignore the facts than to change the preconceptions."

"Only a fool would refuse to enter a fool's paradise when that's the only paradise he'll ever have a chance to enter."

"Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking."
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