Parenting & Family Quote by Terry Brooks

Nostalgia does a lot of rhetorical heavy lifting here, but Terry Brooks isn’t just sighing about the good old days. He’s staking out an origin story for creativity: boredom as the crucible, imagination as a survival skill, storytelling as a kind of informal technology. The line frames childhood not as a consumption habit but as a self-powered engine, where play isn’t delivered by a screen or a service; it’s improvised. That matters coming from a fantasy writer whose entire career depends on persuading readers to co-author worlds in their heads.

The specific intent is partly personal mythmaking. Brooks compresses a generational shift into a neat moral contrast: then, we made our own fun; now, fun is supplied. The subtext isn’t anti-technology so much as pro-agency. “Had to rely” suggests necessity, not preference, implying that imagination thrives when it’s not crowded out by constant stimulation. It’s a subtle rebuke to frictionless entertainment, where the default mode is passive and the imagination becomes a muscle you don’t have to use.

Contextually, Brooks came of age before ubiquitous cable, gaming, and the algorithmic attention economy. That’s why the line lands today as more than a sentimental anecdote. It’s a critique of how abundance can dull appetite: when stories arrive prepackaged, the inner storyteller gets fewer reps. Coming from Brooks, it’s also a defense of fantasy itself: not escapism as avoidance, but as training for the mind’s most underrated job - making something out of nothing.