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The creative act is a letting down of the net of human imagination into the ocean of chaos on which we are suspended, and the attempt to bring out of it ideas.It is the night sea journey, the lone fisherman on a tropical sea with his nets, and you let these nets down - sometimes, something tears through them that leaves them in shreds and you just row for shore, and put your head under your bed and pray. At other times what slips through are the minutiae, the minnows of this ichthyological metaphor of idea chasing.But, sometimes, you can actually bring home something that is food, food for the human community that we can sustain ourselves on and go forward.

The creative act is a letting down of the net of human imagination into the ocean of chaos on which we are suspended, and the attempt to bring out of it ideas.It is the night sea journey, the lone fisherman on a tropical sea with his nets, and you let these nets down - sometimes, something tears through them that leaves them in shreds and you just row for shore, and put your head under your bed and pray. At other times what slips through are the minutiae, the minnows of this ichthyological metaphor of idea chasing.But, sometimes, you can actually bring home something that is food, food for the human community that we can sustain ourselves on and go forward.

Approximate author period: c. 1973 AD · modern

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Attribution & collection notes
Author or tradition
Terence McKenna
Attribution: attributed
Country attributed
Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin.
Historical period
Approximate author period: c. 1973 AD · modern
Approximate author-period evidence for Terence McKenna: life dates 1946 to 2000. Wikidata Q380558, inspected 2026-10-08. Not a quotation composition date or independent verification of attribution. Source: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q380558 (accessed 2026-10-08).
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken.
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Contributor-provided quotation collection

Supplied reference C; CSV row 187722; supplied attribution, independently unverified

A collection's publication date can be later than the words it records.