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Quote by Robert A. Heinlein

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Robert A. Heinlein
Robert A. Heinlein

Robert A. Heinlein was an American science fiction writer, hailed as a master in the field of science fiction. His works have had a profound impact on the development of science fiction literature, with classics such as 'Starship Troopers' and 'The Time Machine'. more

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“Even if Mina left a book sitting open on the table in the sunroom, Yoneda-san would never presume to move it or put away. Beyond the page lay an unknown world, and the open book was a portal to that world that should not be thoughtlessly disturbed, lest Mina be unable to find her way back. Or so Yoneda-san believed. In the house at Ashiya, books were considered more precious than any sculpture or piece of pottery.”

“Well,” she said, “when I decided to put together the land of Oz and the country of the hobbits and Rootabaga and Mother Goose Land, because they were all scattered all over and I kept forgetting which book I had to take to get to each country—well, anyway, I decided to put them all together. Fairyland, too, of course. So it’s all called Gunnywapitat now, and Ozma lives there, and all the hobbits, and the Cowardly Lion and the old woman in the shoe, and Peter Pan, and Oberon and the rest, all there where I can get to them easy. Gunnywapitat.”

“Lyra”, she said, "how's Pan going to recognise your imagination, when he finds it?” “I don’t know. It’s a metaphor.” “Well I know that. But it worked, didn't it? I made you think, he was looking for something that had vanished. So you followed him.” “Because I thought he might have been right. Something was missing.” “What did you feel was missing?” “A … certainty about the world. A sort of sense that fundamentally was true and reliable and just there. A sense that we belonged there too. Belonged in the physical world. Whatever that sense was, I’d had it once, and I didn’t have it any more.” “Maybe imagination was the wrong word.” “No, it was exactly the right word. People think imagination is just making things up, they’re just wrong. Even angels are wrong. Imagination is seeing things properly, real things, seeing them fully in all their context with all their connections in place, all the things they mean around them… The secret commonwealth. p. 433”