Imaginary Things Quotes & Sayings

The way we envision the stars is by imagining they're attached to a giant invisible sphere surrounding the earth. It is a total fiction, really - just a construction we came up with to help us get our heads around the complexity of it all ... The ecliptic, put simply is the plane of the earth's orbit around the sun. But since we all live here on earth, we observe the sun to be moving along this plane instead. Why? Because what would be the point of looking at things from the perspective of the sun? That's no use to anyone ... Ergo, it's an imaginary circle, as it's only a part of our human construction of the cosmos. — Benjamin Wood

Writers spend too much time among dead things. I thought that was profound and actually true, that you're trying to pump life into something that is inanimate. You see what a sort of audacious thing it is to move these sort of imaginary people around in a very stylized and patterned world. — Martin Amis

All money is imaginary," answered the Calcatrix simply. "Money is magic everyone agrees to pretend is not magic. Observe! You treat it like magic, wield it like magic, fear it like magic! Why should a body with more small circles of copper or silver or gold than anyone else have an easy life full of treats every day and sleeping in and other people bowing down? The little circles can't get up and fight a battle or make a supper so splendid you get full just by looking at it or build a house of a thousand gables. They can do those things because everyone agrees to give them power. If everyone agreed to stop giving power to pretty metals and started giving it to thumbnails or mushroom caps or roof shingles or first kisses or tears or hours or puffin feathers, those little circles would just lay there tarnishing in the rain and not making anyone bow their noses down to the ground or stick them up in the air. — Catherynne M Valente

What constitutes a civil society? At minimum, it is a place where ideas, of all kinds, can be criticized without the risk of physical violence. If you live in a land where certain things cannot be said about the king, or about an imaginary being, or about certain books, because such utterances carry the penalty of death, torture, or imprisonment, you do not live in a civil society. It — Sam Harris

She was a little given to rehearsing things in her mind, and having imaginary triumphs over people who had upset her in one way and another. — James M. Cain

They feel very stupid and strange, the things going through your mind. You're making us very tired, with all your thinking of stupid imaginary impossible things. — Orson Scott Card

If we try to hold on to so many things, both real and imaginary, thoughts and emotions, fears, worries and expectations, then we begin to weigh our hearts down and make our minds restless. — Gyalwa Dokhampa

Travel is very useful and it exercises the imagination. All the rest is disappointment and fatigue. Our own journey is entirely imaginary. That is its strength. It goes from life to death. People, animals, cities, things, all are imagined. It's a novel, simply a fictitious narrative. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Shake off those gloomy feelings. Drive them away. Fix your mind and pleasures upon what is before you.All is bright if you will think it so. All is happy if you will make it so. Do not dream. It is too ideal, too imaginary. Dreaming by day, I mean. Live in the world you inhabit. Look upon things as they are. Take them as you find them. Make the best of them. Turn them to your advantage. — Robert E.Lee

To me genres were always an imaginary things, they're just marketing channels. — Michael Gungor

Pride," observed Mary, who piqued herself upon the solidity of her reflections, "is a very common failing, I believe. By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it it very common indeed; that human nature is particularly prone to it, and that there are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency on the score of some quality or the other, real or imaginary. Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have other think of us. — Jane Austen

So, without saying anything to the others, it made its way to the farthest corner of the meadow and began to toast an imaginary muffin. That was always the best way to unwind when things got to be too much for it. — Thomas M. Disch

I was lucky, I had support from Mum and Dad - they said as long as you work hard, anything is possible. I never thought past those two things - that I liked living in imaginary worlds and that it is possible to do that for a living. — Harry Treadaway

Life in a small town is like an intricately plotted novel, and even though I had read every book in the public library by the time I was fourteen, I found the real people around me saying and doing far more interesting things than did the imaginary book characters. — Maxine Cheshire

But think of Adam and Eve like an imaginary number, like the square root of minus one: you can never see any concrete proof that it exists, but if you include it in your equations, you can calculate all manner of things that couldn't be imagined without it. — Philip Pullman

False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that it has no remedy for evils, except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are of such a nature. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man. — Cesare Beccaria

The substance of grief is not imaginary. It's as real as rope or the absence of air, and like both those things, it can kill. — Barbara Kingsolver

Sometimes I'm stressed and I'm sick of things and I need to forget about them for a while, so in Harry Potter you're taken to this wonderful imaginary world where everything is so different. — Evanna Lynch

But he'd found that imaginary things were often the only items of real substance in people's lives. — Brandon Sanderson

Living alone, with no one to consult or talk to, one might easily become melodramatic, and imagine things which had no foundation on fact. — Agatha Christie

But as I grew older, it became harder and harder to access that expansive imaginary space that made my toys fun. I remember looking at them and feeling sort of frustrated and confused that things weren't the same. — Allie Brosh

If something is there, you can only see it with your eyes open, but if it isn't there, you can see it just as well with your eyes closed. That's why imaginary things are often easier to see than real ones. — Norton Juster

For Freud, the semiotic trajectory of the dreamwork determines a phantom architectonics: a cartography of nowhere, an architecture of nothing (or the unconscious), and an archaeology of imaginary depth that always takes place on the surface. As a practice and sensibility, psychoanalysis remains attuned to superficiality; it constitutes a search for depth on the surface of things. — Akira Mizuta Lippit

I've been trying to fit everything in, trying to get to the end before it's too late, but I see now how badly I've deceived myself. Words do not allow such things. The closer you come to the end, the more there is to say. The end is only imaginary, a destination you invent to keep yourself going, but a point comes when you realize you will never get there. You might have to stop, but that is only because you have run out of time. You stop, but that does not mean you have come to an end. — Paul Auster

Poetry is a will to put things right, an imaginary solution, a way of avoiding a catastrophe that already happened. Poetry is an escape, perhaps intelligent, perhaps idiotic, from a senile situation. It is a dialectical movement, it keeps tearing open the wounds while trying to heal them. Here we see the only acceptable path open up towards an existence worthy of human beings. Here the seriousness is unfaltering and absolute. Where it will lead no one knows. — Aase Berg

But if it so happens ... a work ... under pain of otherwise becoming shameful or false, requires fantasy ... [and that] certain limbs or elements of a figure are altered by borrowing from other species, for example transforming into a dolphin the hinder end of a griffon or a stag ... these alterations will be excellent and the substitution, however unreal it may seem, deserves to be declared a fine invention in the genre of the monstrous.
When a painter introduces into this kind of work of art chimerae and other imaginary beings in order to divert and entertain the senses and also to captivate the eyes of mortals who long to see unclassified and impossible things, he shows himself more respectful of reason than if he produced the usual figures of men or of animals. — Michelangelo Buonarroti

As a child I did a lot of imaginary bits, you know. It depends on the individual, I enjoyed then knocking the nail in, I enjoy knocking nails in walls to hang pictures up, but I also enjoy thinking 'I'm gonna do that' but I actually won't do it, I enjoy imagining doing things just as much. — John Lennon

I took my first acting class at age 6 because I found out that's what Carol Burnett was doing - acting. Also she had an imaginary friend as a kid and went to UCLA, two things we have in common. I will always admire her and hope one day, I can make someone laugh a fraction as hard as she's made me bellyache. — Christine Lakin

Adam and Eve are like imaginary numbers, like the square root of minus one ... If you include it in your equation, you can calculate all manners of things, which cannot be imagined without it. — Philip Pullman

There is a moment, in all my studying of movies and scripts, that I'd realized something elemental about human beings and why I'd been attracted to that imaginary world. Each piece of work was attempting to describe the human condition, in all its good, bad and ugly glory. At first, it'd been an extension of my own life, strangely mirrored in this world of 'fiction'. Each story wanted, no - needed - to reveal a human fragility, a human bondage which tied people to the things they did and to be the person they held in their heads. Those stories were something true and sometimes horrific but people were people and the parts didn't just tell the whole story. — C.J. Roberts

He knew that he'd known her for less than a week, but now that she was gone he was continually probing his feelings for her, the way he might probe a sore tooth with his tongue, engaging her in imaginary conversations, imagining her saying such delightful things. — Robert Hellenga

My past has its space, its paths, its nameplaces, and its monuments. Beneath the crossed but distinct orders of succession and simultaneity, beneath the train of synchronizations added onto line by line, we find a nameless network
constellations of spatial hours, of point-events. Should we even say 'thing,' should we say 'imaginary' or 'idea,' when each thing exists beyond itself, when each fact can be a dimension, when ideas have their regions? The whole description of our landscape and the lines of our universe, and of our inner monologue, needs to be redone. Colors, sounds, and things
like Van Gogh's stars
are the focal points and radiance of being. — Maurice Merleau Ponty

Mathematicians enjoy thinking about the simplest possible things, and the simplest possible things are imaginary. — Paul Lockhart

To say that a thing is imaginary is not to dispose of it in the realm of mind, for the imagination, or the image making faculty, is a very important part of our mental functioning. An image formed by the imagination is a reality from the point of view of psychology; it is quite true that it has no physical existence, but are we going to limit reality to that which is material? We shall be far out of our reckoning if we do, for mental images are potent things, and although they do not actually exist on the physical plane, they influence it far more than most people suspect. — Dion Fortune

In my mind, I said the best things to Elton. I wrote countless excellent notes that I never sent. I came up with clever and highly detailed imaginary situations in which we were thrown together and it somehow made him realize that life without me was a hollow shell. But he didn't look like a hollow shell. He looked like he was back on the soccer team, all calf muscles and lean body. — Maureen Johnson

The artist is a collector of things imaginary or real. He accumulates things with the same enthusiasm that a little boy stuffs his pockets. The scrap heap and the museum are embraced with equal curiosity. He takes snapshots, makes notes and records impressions on tablecloths or newspapers, on backs of envelopes or matchbooks. Why one thing and not another is part of the mystery, but he is omnivorous. — Paul Rand

We often think we know things when in fact it's only our imagination taking us further and further away from what is actually happening. What we imagine then seems very real to us. Soon we're caught up in our imaginary longings and loathings. But if you're here - truly present - you realize there's nothing to run from or to go after. You can stay calm ... Just be with this moment and see what's going on. (9) — Steve Hagen

True knowledge of good and evil as we possess is merely abstract or general, and the judgment which we pass on the order of things and the connection of causes, with a view to determining what is good or bad for us in the present, is rather imaginary than real. — Baruch Spinoza

Pride differs in many things from vanity, and by gradations that never blend, although they may be somewhat indistinguishable. Pride may perhaps be termed a too high opinion of ourselves founded on the overrating of certain qualities that we do actually possess; whereas vanity is more easily satisfied, and can extract a feeling of self-complacency from qualifications that are imaginary. — Charles Caleb Colton

I have a funny mental framework when I do physics. I create an imaginary audience in my head to explain things to - it is part of the way I think. For me, teaching and explaining, even to my imaginary audience, is part of the process. — Leonard Susskind

It's hard to talk about the importance of an imaginary hero. But heroes ARE important: Heroes tell us something about ourselves.
History tells us who we used to be, documentaries tell us who we are now; but heroes tell us who we WANT to be.
And a lot of our heroes depress me.
But when they made this particular hero, they didn't give him a gun
they gave him a screwdriver to fix things. They didn't give him a tank or a warship or an x-wing fighter
they gave him a box from which you can call for help. And they didn't give him a superpower or pointy ears or a heat-ray
they gave him an extra HEART. They gave him two hearts! And that's an extraordinary thing.
There will never come a time when we don't need a hero like the Doctor. — Steven Moffat

Most of us are used to thinking that "imaginary" is the opposite of "real." That is, when we imagine things, we are just making them up. In the spiritual life, though, there are some realities that cannot manifest unless we begin by imagining them. — Linda Bender

There's atoms, which is things that is too small to see, that's what we're all made of. And there's things that are smaller than atoms, and that's Particle Physics.
Bod nodded and decided that Scarlett's father was probably interested in imaginary things. — Neil Gaiman

Dragons are a manifestation of things we fear. More often than not, those fears prove to be just as daunting and just as imaginary. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Man is just a memory. You understand things around you by the help of the knowledge that was put in you. You perhaps need the artist to explain his modern art, but you don't need anybody's help to understand a flower. You can deal with anything, you can do anything if you do not waste your energy trying to achieve imaginary goals. — U.G. Krishnamurti

Everything has a sort of double meaning for me, there's the ordinary everyday meaning of things, and the imaginary meaning about it all, and I wanted to bring these things together, and in this first big Resurrection of mine you have a good example of this sort of thing. — Stanley Spencer

A lot of the songs on the new album are about imaginary things, things that you can't touch - ghosts and rumors, my dead grandmother, things visiting you in a dream. — Florence Welch

The things I fear may all be imaginary, so what I fear most is my imagination. — Ashleigh Brilliant

Silly man, doesn't he know money is imaginary? It's paper that turns into numbers on screens, after all. It's there, then it's gone. I put it places, I take it out, I move it someplace else. Imaginary. Most things are imaginary, when you think about it. — Kiersten White

No fiction, no myths, no lies, no tangled webs - this is how Irie imagined her homeland. Because homeland is one of the magical fantasy words like unicorn and soul and infinity that have now passed into language. — Zadie Smith

If I could live again my life,
In the next - I'll try,
- to make more mistakes,
I won't try to be so perfect,
I'll be more relaxed ...
I'll take fewer things seriously..
I'll take more risks,
I'll take more trips,
I'll watch more sunsets,
I'll climb more mountains,
I'll swim more rivers,
I'll go to more places I've never been
I'll eat more ice ... I'll have more real problems and less imaginary ones
If I could live again - I will travel light
If I could live again - I'll try to work bare feet at the beginning of spring till the end of autumn,
I'll watch more sunrises ... If I have the life to live — Jorge Luis Borges

You were the living image of the entire Platonic shadow show, an illusion that could fill my emptiness with marvellous, imaginary things as long as, just as long as, the movie lasted, and then all would all vanish. — Angela Carter

Well, now you can see for yourself that she was delicate", said Davey triumphantly. "She's dead. It killed her. Doesn't that show you? I do wish I could make you Radletts understand that there is no such thing as imaginary illness. Nobody who is quite well could possibly be bothered to do all the things that I, for instance, am obliged to, in order to keep my wretched frame on its feet. — Nancy Mitford

There may be a Nurse Ratched-like listing of things that must be done right this moment: foods that must come out of the freezer, appointments that must be canceled or made, hairs that must be tweezed. But you hold an imaginary gun to your head and make yourself stay at the desk. — Anne Lamott

Real shapes and real patterns are things you would observe in nature, like the marks on the back of a cobra's hood or the markings on a fish or a lizard. Imaginary shapes are just that, symbols that come to a person in dreams or reveries and are charged with meaning. — Jim Woodring

Things have changed, of course. There are counsellors at the ready. Kindness and understanding. Life is harder for some, we're told. Not their fault, even if the blows are purely imaginary. Felt just as keenly by the recipient, or the non recipient, as the case may be.
But good use can be made of everything, if you are willing. — Alice Munro

Why do I get the feeling our relationship is backwards?" Ryn asks as he wanders into my room, shrugs his jacket off, and hangs it over the back of my desk chair. "Isn't it usually the girl who always wants to talk about feelings and the guy who bottles everything up inside?" "I don't bottle things up," I shoot back. Well, there is an imaginary box I like to hide things in, but that's different. "Right. — Rachel Morgan

Old England is an imaginary place, a landscape built from words, woodcuts, films, paintings, picturesque engravings. It is a place imagined by people, and people do not live very long or look very hard. We are very bad at scale. The things that live in the soil are too small to care about; climate change too large to imagine. We are bad at time too. We cannot remember what lived here before we did; we cannot love what is not. Nor can we imagine what will be different when we are dead. We live out our three score and ten, and tie our knots and lines only to ourselves. We take solace in pictures, and we wipe the hills of history. — Helen Macdonald

One of the strange things about imaginary food is that it allows us to take pleasure in reading about things that we would never want to eat in real life. — Bee Wilson

In humility is the greatest freedom. As long as you have to defend the imaginary self that you think is important, you lose your piece of heart. As soon as you compare that shadow with the shadows of other people, you lose all joy, because you have begun to trade in unrealities and there is no joy in things that do not exist. — Thomas Merton

Prejudice is the conjuror of imaginary wrongs, strangling truth, over-powering reason, making strong people weak, and weak people weaker. God gave us the large-hearted charity which "beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things," which "thinketh no evil!" — John Ross Macduff

Most people find the word Apocalypse, to be a terrifying concept. Checked in the dictionary, it means only revelation, although it obviously has also come to mean end of the world. As to what the end of the world means, I would say that probably depends on what we mean by world. I don't think this means the planet, or even the life forms upon the planet. I think the world is purely a construction of ideas, and not just the physical structures, but the mental structures, the ideologies that we've erected, that is what I would call the world. Our political structures, philosophical structures, ideological frameworks, economies. These are actually imaginary things, and yet that is the framework that we have built our entire world upon. It strikes me that a strong enough wave of information could completely overturn and destroy all of that. A sudden realization that would change our entire perspective upon who we are and how we exist. — Alan Moore

There is no real evil in life, except great pain; all the rest is imaginary, and depends on the light in which we view things — Marie De Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise De Sevigne

Actors speak of things imaginary as if they were real, while you preachers too often speak of things real as if they were imaginary. — Thomas Betterton

These are facts, these are not imaginary things. — Iyad Allawi

I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralysed much of my own religion in childhood. Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings. And reverence itself did harm. The whole subject was associated with lowered voices; almost as if it were something medical. But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday School associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could. — C.S. Lewis

Edgar, do you actually think that how long a person grieves is a measure of how much they loved someone? There's no rule book that says how to do this." She laughed, bitterly. "Wouldn't that be great? No decisions to make. Everything laid right out for us. But there's no such thing. You want facts, don't you? Rules. Proof. You're like your father that way. Just because a thing can't be logged, charted, and summarized doesn't mean it isn't real. Half the time we walk around in love with the idea of a thing instead of the reality of it. But sometimes things don't turn out that way. You have to pay attentin to what's real, what's in the world. Not some imaginary alternative, as if it's a choice we could make. — David Wroblewski

Even though I was making documentaries, my films had fictional elements to them. I think I like blurring those distinctions because so much of what we see on television purports to be the truth, but it's often largely imaginary - or wishful thinking, or any number of less honorable things. — Ruth Ozeki

It was all beginning to run together in the back of Eleanor's mind, and the things that had probably really happened were confused with the things that probably hadn't. And every day everything in her whole past life - the real things and the imaginary things - was being pushed farther and farther back, because going to high school was so enormous, so vast! so different from all of Eleanor's life before. The milling crowds in the hall between classes, all those jostling elbows and swollen shoulders and bosoms, all those enormous hands and feet, they pushed and thumped and shoved at Eleanor's childhood, until there was no room anymore for anything but now, right now, a hurrying rushing now that was just incredibly thrilling, or absolutely rotten and just disgusting, this heaving present moment, right now. — Jane Langton

The prophet said, "Be ye imitators of God as dear children." How would I imitate God? Well, we are told that God calls things that are not seen as though they were seen, and the unseen becomes seen. This is the way the girl called forth praise and kindness from her employer. She carried on an imaginary conversation with her employer from the premise that he had praised her work, and he did. — Neville Goddard

I'm not really afraid of things that are imaginary. I enjoy it. I enjoy big narrative, and I enjoy big feelings. Having a feeling is never going to kill you. — Julianne Moore

Growing up, I had a very vivid imagination and Leonardo was like my best imaginary friend that I spoke to. When things were tough, or I was scared in an unsafe environment, I always imagined that the Ninja Turtles would come to the rescue. — Ruby Rose

The distinction between what is real and what is imaginary is not one that can be finally maintained...all existing things are, in an intelligible sense, imaginary. — John Stuart Mackenzie

I had an incredibly full life with my imagination: I used to have all sorts of trolls and things; I had a wonderful world around my toys and invented people. I don't mean I had imaginary friends; I just had this big imagination thing going on. I didn't need any imaginary friends, because I had so much other stuff going on. — Kate Bush

Travel is useful, it exercises the imagination. All the rest is disappointment and fatigue. Our journey is entirely imaginary. That is its strength.
It goes from life to death. People, animals, cities, things, all are imagined. It's a novel, just a fictitious narrative. Littre says so and he's never wrong.
And besides, in the first place, anyone can do as much. You just have to close your eyes.
It's on the other side of life. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Men should continue to fight, but they should fight for things worth while, not for imaginary geographical lines, racial prejudices and private greed draped in the color's of patriotism. — Albert Einstein

The metaphor is perhaps one of man's most fruitful potentialities. Its efficacy verges on magic, and it seems a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of His creatures when He made him. All our faculties keep us within the realm of the real, of what is already there. The most we can do is to combine things or break them up. The metaphor alone furnishes an escape; between the real things, it lets emerge imaginary reefs, a crop of floating islands. — Jose Ortega Y Gasset

Most things are imaginary, when you think about it. Sometimes I think I'm imaginary. — Kiersten White

I like cartoons. I like 'Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends.' It's funny! It has things that kids wouldn't get. It's like, if you're mature, you get it. I like that and 'The Fairly OddParents.' — David Archuleta

Science fiction is essentially a kind of fiction in which people learn more about how to live in the real world, visiting imaginary worlds unlike our own, in order to investigate by way of pleasurable thought-experiments how things might be done differently. — Brian Stableford

Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else. — C.S. Lewis

... This is a major theme in mathematics: things are what you want them to be. You have endless choices; there is no reality to get in your way.

On the other hand, once you have made your choices then your new creations do what they do, whether you like it or not. This is the amazing thing about making imaginary patterns: they talk back! — Paul Lockhart

I live in two unique worlds, traveling between both with just the opening or closing of my eyes. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Beside Thane - who watched the setting sun with such peace, with such light in his eyes - the "woman" seemed imaginary.
Because she is, Ceony realized, a second breeze tickling her skirt and blowing loose flower petals across her vision. These are the things Thane - Emery - hopes for.
She studied him, his peace and his contentment, the eyes that seemed to radiate life. She studied the shadowy woman beside him from head to foot. He wants to fall in love again. — Charlie N. Holmberg

The consolation of imaginary things is not imaginary consolation. — Roger Scruton

This isn't about what is ... it's about what people think is. It's all imaginary anyway. That's why it's important. People only fight over imaginary things. — Neil Gaiman

I want you, as a reader, to experience what I experience, to let that other world, that imaginary world that I have created, tell you things about the real world. — Terry Brooks

It's true we all build imaginary prisons for ourselves. Believe that we are trapped behind the invisible bars of the lives we have somehow carelessly constructed for ourselves, despite our youthful promises to ourselves. We see adults who are stagnant and miserable as we grow up. They graffiti the walls behind them with their mistakes and we swear secret oaths that we will heed those warnings. We're much too clever, we know all the shortcuts and the back alleys. — Thomas Lloyd Qualls

Bethany." His quiet voice intruded.
Her heart turned over heavily. "This is real right?"
His face contorted as if he were in pain. "Yes, it's real."
Crazy people probably did things like this all the time. Asked their imaginary alien friends if they were real, and of course, they'd say yes. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

We will not, therefore, lose our time praying to an imaginary god for things which our own exertions alone can procure. — Francesc Ferrer I Guardia

Here's the truth. We want to read too much into life because it's convenient. Or fun. But there's no imaginary, invisible man in the sky who makes things happen. — Jessica Park

Gods, religions and national boundaries are absolutely imaginary. They don't tend to exist. As soon as you pull back half a mile and look down at the Earth there are no national boundaries. There aren't even national boundaries when you get down and walk around. They're just imaginary lines we draw on maps. I just get fascinated by people who assume that things that are imaginary have no relevance to their lives. — Neil Gaiman

He tries again, swallowing hard to ease away the painful lump in his throat. "It's just important. I love you. I'm yours. I need people to know."
"Alright," Lindsay says suddenly. He leans down to grab at Pip's bag, throwing stuff out onto the carpet, his iPod and phone and wallet and gloves and Attitude magazine until he finds what he's looking for, a green marker pen, and holds it between his teeth while he starts tugging at the hem of Pip's t-shirt. Pip's too surprised to do anything but submit, he lets Lindsay peel off his t-shirt and throw that on top of all the things from his bag then just watches as Lindsay pulls the pen out of the cap in his mouth and signs his name in big green letters on the side of Pip's stomach. He holds his breath, trying not to suck in the belly fat everybody else keeps telling him is imaginary. "There, you're mine, are you fucking happy now?" Lindsay snaps, and throws the recapped pen across the room to get lost in the bookcase somewhere. — Richard Rider

Either God can do nothing to stop catastrophes like this, or he doesn't care to, or he doesn't exist. God is either impotent, evil, or imaginary. Take your pick, and choose wisely.
The only sense to make of tragedies like this is that terrible things can happen to perfectly innocent people. This understanding inspires compassion.
Religious faith, on the other hand, erodes compassion. Thoughts like, 'this might be all part of God's plan,' or 'there are no accidents in life,' or 'everyone on some level gets what he or she deserves' - these ideas are not only stupid, they are extraordinarily callous. They are nothing more than a childish refusal to connect with the suffering of other human beings. It is time to grow up and let our hearts break at moments like this. — Sam Harris

Just throw away all thoughts of
imaginary things,
and stand firm in that which you are. — Kabir

Pride is a very common failing, I believe. By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it is very common indeed, that human nature is particularly prone to it, and that there are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency on the score of some quality or other, real or imaginary. Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what would have others think of us. — Jane Austen

Some things can be both real and imaginary at the same time, ... some lies can be true, ... broken faith may be restored. — Joanne Harris

Tedium, yes, is boredom with the world, the nagging discomfort of living, the weariness of having lived; tedium is indeed the carnal sensation of endless emptiness of things. But tedium, even more than all that, is a boredom with other worlds, whether real or imaginary; the discomfort of having to keep living, albeit as someone else in some other way, in some other world; weariness not only of yesterday and today but also of tomorrow and of eternity, if such exists, or of nothingness, if that's what eternity is. It's not only the emptiness of things and living beings that troubles the soul afflicted by tedium, it's also the emptiness of the very soul that feels this vacuum, that feels itself to be this vacuum, and that within this vacuum is nauseated and repelled by its own self. — Pessoa, Fernando

There is an implicit recognition here that important things in life are not always immediately visible, and can't always be named, or even fully understood. Others still are entirely imaginary
like a red tree growing suddenly in a room
although this does not make them any less real. — Shaun Tan

Stand firm in that which you are. — Kabir