“Everybody has the ability to free associate, but society tends to frown on active fantasies. Beyond a certain age, we stop playing games, ‘let’s pretend,’ ‘what if,’ and all that. It goes on in your head anyway, but at some point you start to feel guilty. You know, you listen to a symphony and imagine that you’re the conductor, and there you are, conducting like crazy, but then you get to be a grown man, and you say, ‘Gee, I’d hate for anybody to know that I’m pretending I’m conducting the symphony.’ But that kind of fantasy life is the real key to problem solving at every level. It’s certainly the primary tool for problem solving in art, whether it’s painting or dancing or choreography or directing films or writing scripts or writing novels or whatever.”
– Sydney Pollack, Oscar-winning Movie Director