Skip to main content

Art & Creativity Quote by Kit Williams

"I took lots of photographs and had planned to write a treatise on how it worked, but I quickly got bored with that idea and wrote a scientific fairy tale instead"

About this Quote

The line lands like a shrug from a restless mind: yes, he did the diligent work, and yes, he abandoned it the moment it started to feel like homework. Kit Williams frames creativity as a choice against explanation, not because explanation is useless, but because it’s spiritually insufficient. Photographs and a treatise belong to the world of proof, documentation, instruction. A "scientific fairy tale" belongs to seduction: it invites you to participate, to infer rules rather than be lectured about them.

The intent is quietly rebellious. Williams isn’t confessing laziness so much as rejecting the prestige of the technical manual. "Quickly got bored" is doing double duty: it’s self-deprecation that disarms criticism, and it’s a critique of a culture that treats mechanism as the highest form of understanding. In his formulation, the more exact you get, the less alive the thing feels. The fairy tale becomes a workaround for communicating how something works without embalming it.

Context matters: Williams is the sort of author-illustrator associated with puzzle-box storytelling (Masquerade is the obvious touchstone), where the reader’s attention is the engine. A treatise would put the author in charge; a tale makes the audience complicit. "Scientific" keeps the whimsy from floating away into pure fantasy, while "fairy tale" keeps the science from hardening into pedagogy. The subtext is a manifesto for narrative as a delivery system for knowledge: meaning sticks when it’s smuggled in, not when it’s announced.

Quote Details

TopicWriting
SourceHelp us find the source
Cite

Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Williams, Kit. (2026, January 16). I took lots of photographs and had planned to write a treatise on how it worked, but I quickly got bored with that idea and wrote a scientific fairy tale instead. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-took-lots-of-photographs-and-had-planned-to-96124/

Chicago Style
Williams, Kit. "I took lots of photographs and had planned to write a treatise on how it worked, but I quickly got bored with that idea and wrote a scientific fairy tale instead." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-took-lots-of-photographs-and-had-planned-to-96124/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I took lots of photographs and had planned to write a treatise on how it worked, but I quickly got bored with that idea and wrote a scientific fairy tale instead." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-took-lots-of-photographs-and-had-planned-to-96124/. Accessed 4 Mar. 2026.

More Quotes by Kit Add to List
Scientific Fairy Tale: Kit Williams on Story and Method
Click to enlarge Portrait | Landscape

About the Author

England Flag

Kit Williams (born September 8, 1946) is a Author from England.

22 more quotes available

View Profile

Similar Quotes

George E. Brown, Jr., Politician