Alteration Quotes

“The boundaries of this world are forever shifting – from day to night, joy to sorrow, love to hate, and from life itself to death; and who can say at what moment we may suddenly cross over the border, from one state of existence to another, like heat applied to some flammable substance? I have been given my own ever-changing margins, across which I move, continually and hungrily, like a migrating animal. Now civilized, now untamed; now responsive to decency and human concern, now viciously attuned to the darkest of desires.”
― Michael Cox, The Meaning of Night

“The soul often hangs in a balance of some sort. Tonight do I lie down in the high fields with Dirk Tanner or not? At the fair, do I buy ribbons or wine? For the new ferry’s headboard, do I use camphor or pearwood? Small things. A kiss, a ribbon, a grain that coaxes the knife this way or that. They are not, Kit Meinem of Atyar. Our souls wait for our answer because any answer changes us. This is why I wait to decide what I feel about your bridge. I’m waiting until I know how I will be changed.”
“You never know how things will change you,” Kit said.
“If you don’t, you have not waited to find out.”
― Kij Johnson, Asimov's Science Fiction, October/November 2011

“Smoke! Did all human passion burn away and drift in a blue film over the fields, obscure for a moment the sight of the sun and the shapes of the crops and the trees, then fade into air and leave the clear hard day; and no difference anywhere? Not quite! For smoke was burnt tissue, and where fire had raged there was alteration.”
― John Galsworthy, Flowering Wilderness

“The higher-ups read into things. And they ignore sentences they don’t like.”
― Vincent H. O'Neil, A Pause in the Perpetual Rotation

“Exactly, what form this alteration has taken. I will never know. I don't feel sedated, jittery or drugged. I simply feel normal-as if I had been driving a car all these years with the parking brake on, and now it is off. I feel as if the real me has returned, perhaps all the way from childhood, where she lived before The Beast arrived.”
― William Dudley, Antidepressants

“Philosophy will never alter the very nature of you. Philosophy does not believe in miracles and it cannot do miracles. But you can be assured that philosophy will strengthen the best and the kindest parts of your nature.”
― Giannis Delimitsos

“We either choose to be entertained or we choose to be transformed. For entertainment is often the escape of the mind that is too fearful to hear the cry of the soul.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Just thinking about making a difference won’t.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough