Today mythical thinking has fallen into disrepute we often dismiss it as irrational and self-indulgent. But the imagination is also the faculty that has enabled scientists to bring new knowledge to light and to invent technology that has made us immeasurably more effective.

I've always felt that what I have going for me is not my imagination because everyone has an imagination. What I have is a relentlessly controlled imagination. What looks like wild invention is actually quite carefully calculated.

No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination.

My country has contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.

Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity it is the power to that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

Perhaps naively I thought people understand what humor was that it was invented by the human race to cope with the dark areas of life problems and terrors.

But it was this tough little character part that I was playing a very funny little guy that I invented over a weekend because I realized I was not contributing to the humor of this thing. And I had to do something.

Whether it's viewers of the show or readers of my columns and books I'm consistently impressed with their wit humor and insight. That goes for about 95 percent of the audience. The other five percent are why the 'Delete' option and restraining orders were invented.

Inventions have long since reached their limit and I see no hope for further development.

When you put something out there into the world there's all these words you don't want to hear that you hope people don't say. I don't like anything that starts with 're' - like retro reinvent recreate - I hate that. It's always like living in the past - copying emulating.

I have often said that I wish I had invented blue jeans: the most spectacular the most practical the most relaxed and nonchalant. They have expression modesty sex appeal simplicity - all I hope for in my clothes.

But inspiration? - That's when you come home from abroad and are asked: Well have you found inspiration? - and fortunately you haven't. But the impressions sink in of course and may emerge later: None of us has invented the house that was done many thousands of years ago.

Television is an invention that permits you to be entertained in your living room by people you wouldn't have in your home.

Fiction was invented the day Jonas arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale.

If you take a look at history you will find that the understanding of what is good and evil has always existed before the individual religions. The religions were only invented by people afterwards in order to express this idea.

I did a book in 1996 an overview of black history. In that process I became more aware of a lot of the black inventors of the 19th century.

It's a struggle but that's why we exist so that another generation of Lesbians of color will not have to invent themselves or their history all over again.

The judicial system is the most expensive machine ever invented for finding out what happened and what to do about it.

I heard a definition once: Happiness is health and a short memory! I wish I'd invented it because it is very true.

His was a great sin who first invented consciousness. Let us lose it for a few hours.

I think in a way I invented the term 'fight club' and that these things have always existed but they never really had a label. Nobody had a language to apply to them. I created that language in two words and I've been paid a great deal of money for inventing two words and labeling something that has always been around.

The very greatest things - great thoughts discoveries inventions - have usually been nurtured in hardship often pondered over in sorrow and at length established with difficulty.

There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention.

If somebody invented cigarettes today the government would not legalize them.