" What is imagining like? Like being a plant. What is imagining? It is not-perception: it is instead the quasi-percipient, slightly percipient, almost percipient, not yet percipient, after-percipient of perceptual mimesis. Like the rolled-back pale peach of the daylily Oakleigh, it is not sentience but sentience rolled back. "

― Elaine Scarry , Dreaming by the Book