Art Matters: Because Your Imagination Can Change the World

It is easy to pretend that nobody can change anything, that society is huge and the individual is less than nothing. But the truth is individuals make the future, and they do it by imagining that things can be different.

Fiction is the lie that tells the truth. We all have an obligation to daydream. We have an obligation to imagine. It is easy to pretend that nobody can change anything, that society is huge and the individual is less than nothing. But the truth is individuals make the future, and they do it by imagining that things can be different.

So be wise. And if you cannot be wise, pretend to be someone who is wise and then just behave like they would. Now go, and make interesting mistakes. Make Interesting. Mistakes. Make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for you being here. Make good art.

Fiction builds empathy. Fiction is something you build up from twenty-six letters and a handful of punctuation marks, and you, and you alone, using your imagination, create a world, and people it and look out through other eyes. You're being someone else, and when you return to your own world, you're going to be slightly changed.

We have an obligation to Read For Pleasure. If others see us reading, we show that reading is A Good Thing." "It gets you through good times and it gets you through the other ones.

I love the way words and pictures work together on a page. I have also noticed how when wise words have visuals added to them, they seem to travel further online, like paper aeroplanes catching an updraught.

i started trying to think what the best advice i'd been given over the years was. and it came from stephen king twenty years ago, at the height of the success of sandman. i was writing a comic that people loved and were taking seriously. king liked sandman and my novel with terry pratchett, good omens, and he saw the madness, the long singing lines, all that, and his advice was this: 'this is really great. you should enjoy it.' and i didn't. best advice i got that i ignored. instead i worried about it. i worried about the next deadline, the next idea, the next story. there wasn't a moment for the next fourteen or fifteen years that i wasn't writing something in my head, or wondering about it. and i didn't stop and look around and go, this is really fun.

If you don't know it's impossible,it's easier to do. And because nobody's done it before, they haven't made up the rules to stop anyone doing that again, yet.

But the one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.

Whatever you do, you have one thing that's unique. You have the ability to make art. And for me, and for so many of the people I have known, that's been a lifesaver. The ultimate lifesaver. It gets you through good times and it gets you through the other ones.

Life is sometimes hard. Things go wrong, in life and in love and and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do...Make good art. Probably things will work out somehow, and eventually time will take the sting away, but that doesn't matter. Do what only you do best. Make good art. Make it on the good days too.

Where would be the fun in making something you knew was going to work?

make YOUR art, do the stuff that only you can do...but the one thing you have that nobody else has, is you. Your voice, you remind, your story, your vision - so write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can. The moment that you feel that just possibly you're walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself, that's the moment you may be starting to get it right.

When things get tough, this is what you should do: make good art.

Physical books are tough, hard to destroy, bath resistant, solar operated, feel good in your hand: they are good at being books, and there will always be a place for them.

Nothing I did where the only reason for doing it was the money was ever worth it.

I decided that I would do my best in future not to write books just for the money. If you didn't get the money, then you didn't have anything. If I did work I was proud of, and I didn't get the money, at least I'd have the work.

I decided that I' would do my best in future not to write books just for the money. If you didn't get the money, then you didn't have anything. If I did work I was proud of, and I didn't get the money, at least I'd have the work.

Books are the way that the dead communicate with us.

…if you were trapped in an impossible situation, in an unpleasant place, with people who meant you ill and someone offered you a temporary escape, why wouldn't you take it? and escapist fiction is just that, fiction that opens the door- shows the sunlight outside, gives you a place to go where you are in control with people you want to be with. And books are real places make no mistake about that.

I do not believe that all books will or should migrate onto screens: as Douglas Adams once pointed out to me over twenty years before digital books showed up, a physical book is like a shark. Sharks are old : there were sharks in the ocean before the dinosaurs. And the reason there are still sharks around is that sharks are better at being sharks than anything else is.

Make interesting, amazing, glorious, fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for you being here. Make good art.

You're finding out something as you read that will be vitally important for making your way in the world. And it's this: The world doesn't have to be like this. Things can be different.

Quando você lê, faz uma descoberta que será fundamental para trilhar seu caminho no mundo. É a seguinte: o mundo não precisa ser desse jeito. É possível mudar.