Mystery is the Catalyst for Imagination
"One of the things that I bought at the magic store was this: Tannen's Mystery Magic Box. The premise behind the mystery magic box was the following: 15 dollars buys you 50 dollars worth of magic. Which is a savings. Now, I bought this decades ago...I don't keep everything, but for some reason I haven't opened this box...And I started thinking, why haven't I opened it?
The price of mystery has risen a bit since 1976.And I realized that I haven't opened it because it represents something important -- to me. It represents my grandfather...[and] it represents infinite possibility. It represents hope. It represents potential. And what I love about this box, and what I realize I sort of do in whatever it is that I do, is I find myself drawn to infinite possibility, that sense of potential. And I realize that mystery is the catalyst for imagination. Now, it's not the most ground-breaking idea, but when I started to think that maybe there are times where mystery is more important than knowledge, I started getting interested in this."
~ J.J. Abrams, from "Mystery Box," TED, March 2007
See also:
- "The Crowd Teaser," by Frank Bruni, The New York Times Magazine, May 29, 2011
- Super 8 Movie Site
- "J.J. Abrams on the Magic of Mystery," Wired Magazine, April 20, 2009