“Mr. Miéville says what attracts him to the genre, as a reader and a writer, is the importance of the imagination –

‘that sense of the world blown apart, that sense of a crack in reality, that visionary sense, that ecstatic sense’, as he describes it.

‘At a certain stage some people end up not trusting their own imagination,’ Mr. Miéville said. ‘You get this kind of baleful set of voices in your head that tell you, “that’s silly, you’re being silly”.

But I think most people have more ideas in their head than they think they do. It’s just that those of us in the fantastic fields – either we don’t listen to our own filters, or we have a much higher ridiculousness threshold.’ ”

Interview with China Miéville, NY Times July 23rd, 2010

I discovered this in one of my old journals. I love the idea of a ridiculousness threshold. How high is yours?