#alter

Why do we want to have alternate worlds? It's a way of making progress. You have to imagine something before you do it. ↗

— Joan Aiken

#imagination

Take your place, then. Look at what happened from every side and consider all the other ways it could have gone. Consider, even, an Africa unconquered altogether. Imagine those first Portuguese adventurers approaching the shore, spying on the jungle’s edge through their fitted brass lenses. Imagine that by some miracle of dread or reverence they lowered their spyglasses, turned, set their riggings, sailed on. Imagine all who came after doing the same. What would that Africa be now? All I can think of is the other okapi, the one they used to believe in. A unicorn that could look you in the eye. ↗

— Barbara Kingsolver

#alternative-histories #freedom #freedom

It was an alien place, as much inhuman as it was ungodly. There was no life in this place. It was a different world altogether. This world was dead. ↗

— Angelo Tsanatelis

#fantasy-fiction #median-kingdom #life

I am a glorious child of God. I am joyful, serene, positive, and loving. ↗

— Marianne Williamson

#love

the fact that they stole their whole shtick from Woody Guthrie and the coal-mining bards. While the alternative nation meows about personal fashion angst, the Appalachian nation still sings about unemployment. ↗

— Jim Goad

#country-music #hippies #woody-guthrie #music

I haven't heard anything new that I've liked on the show. A lot of the bands we play with are just bad, especially those alternative rock bands. They can do it in the studio but they can't play live... I see the audience applauding while they're playing, and I wonder if it's just because they're fans of the band and don't care, or out of spite. Because it certainly isn't because they sound good. Branford Marsalis on the musical acts booked on The Tonight Show. ↗

— Neil Strauss Branford Marsalis

#branford-marsalis #music #tonight-show #love

Those who loved with all their heart and mind and might have always thought of death, and those who knew the endless nights of harrowing concern for others have longed for it. The life I want is a life I could not endure in eternity. It is a life of love and intensity, suffering and creation, that makes life worthwhile and death welcome. There is no other life I should prefer. Neither should I like not to die." (The Faith of a Heretic) ↗

— Walter Kaufmann

#creativity #death #eternity #love #walter-kaufmann

It is the nature, and the advantage, of strong people that they can bring out the crucial questions and form a clear opinion about them. The weak always have to decide between alternatives that are not their own. ↗

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

#advantage #alternatives #always #between #bring

You are educated. Your certification is in your degree. You may think of it as the ticket to the good life. Let me ask you to think of an alternative. Think of it as your ticket to change the world. ↗

— Tom Brokaw

#alternative #ask #change #change the world #degree

My breakthrough as a reader was when I discovered the European adventure story writers - Alexander Dumas, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Walter Scott, to name a few. ↗

— Terry Brooks

#alexander #breakthrough #discovered #european #few