#na

Human history, like all great movements, was cyclical, and returned to the point of beginning. The idea of indefinite progress in a right line was a chimera of the imagination, with no analogue in nature. The parabola of a comet was perhaps a yet better illustration of the career of humanity. Tending upward and sunward from the aphelion of barbarism, the race attained the perihelion of civilization only to plunge downward once more to its nether goal in the regions of chaos. ↗

— Edward Bellamy

#chaos #civilization #imagination

Her parents exchanged an odd glance. Her mother’s lips curved. “Yes, I imagine that he possesses a rather large cannon,” she said, spearing her sausage with a fork. ↗

— Meljean Brook

#imagination

Anything seems possible at night when the rest of the world has gone to sleep. ↗

— David Almond

#imagination #night #sleep #imagination

Reality is such a pain. Those of us who were fed up with that kind of reality decided to remake it. We’d set up a partition, separate what’s important to us from what was trash, put only the things we loved on our side, and got rid of the rest. ↗

— Ryohgo Narita

#erika #fiction #imagination #imagination

I make believe like asexuals make love—alone, with cardboard tubes.
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#asexual #cardboard-tubes #imagination #love #make-believe

It is said that you can't write without a reader. The opposite holds true as well; you can't read without a writer. But if as a single, creative person you are one in the same, then, well.....problem solved! Great writing is born from that which we personally long to read. ↗

— Richelle E. Goodrich

#imagination #reading #richelle #richelle-goodrich #writing

The trouble with men is that they have limited minds. That's the trouble with women, too." ["Existence" (1975)] ↗

— Joanna Russ

#limitations #mind #thinking #imagination

He knew he had to investigate. That would be the only thing that would calm him down. Go out into the cold darkness and find out what was there. You must face your fears. You must confront them head on and find out what is real and what is imagined. That's the only way you can proceed through life. ↗

— Stein

#fears #imagination

I've imagined great victories, and I've imagined great races. The races are better. ↗

— Mark Helprin

#imagination

Millions of American women, and some men, commit that outrage every summer day. They are turning a superb treat into mere provender. Shucked and boiled in water, sweet corn is edible and nutritious; roasted in the husk in the hottest possible oven for forty minutes, shucked at the table, and buttered and salted, nothing else, it is ambrosia. No chef’s ingenuity and imagination have ever created a finer dish. American women should themselves be boiled in water. ↗

— Rex Stout

#imagination