bridg

“When I began writing The Night Bookmobile, it was a story about a woman's secret life as a reader. As I worked it also became a story about the claims that books place on their readers, the imbalance between our inner and outer lives, a cautionary tale of the seductions of the written word. It became a vision of the afterlife as a library, of heaven as a funky old camper filled with everything you've ever read. What is this heaven? What is it we desire from the hours, weeks, lifetimes we devote to books? What would you sacrifice to sit in that comfy chair with perfect light for an afternoon in eternity, reading the perfect book, forever?”
― Audrey Niffenegger, The Night Bookmobile

“As adults we choose our own reading material. Depending on our moods and needs we might read the newspaper, a blockbuster novel, an academic article, a women's magazine, a comic, a children's book, or the latest book that just about everyone is reading. No one chastises us for our choice. No one says, 'That's too short for you to read.' No one says, 'That's too easy for you, put it back.' No one says 'You couldn't read that if you tried -- it's much too difficult.'

Yet if we take a peek into classrooms, libraries, and bookshops we will notice that children's choices are often mocked, censured, and denied as valid by idiotic, interfering teachers, librarians, and parents. Choice is a personal matter that changes with experience, changes with mood, and changes with need. We should let it be.”
― Mem Fox, Radical Reflections: Passionate Opinions on Teaching, Learning, and Living

“For these beings, fall is ever the normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond. Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave. Does blood stir their veins? No: the night wind. What ticks in their head? The worm. What speaks from their mouth? The toad. What sees from their eye? The snake. What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars. They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth....Such are the autumn people.”
― Ray Bradbury

“I want to show you a body.

They are sitting on a rock that is covered in moss. The body is holding a knife and wearing Doc Martens with flowers on the sides and they are whittling something out of dead wood. They are whittling a 3d model of a pulsating blob GIF out of dead wood. It has too many dimensions, and so they are struggling to get it right.

As the knife separates the layers of woodskin they are softly chanting the word “caress,” because this is the future, and the word has become a war cry, or a weapon. The knife slips and cuts a minuscule chip out of the brown wood and of their brown thumb. They are smiling and they are bleeding all over it.

There is a body and they are sitting on a rock. Let them narrate this story for you, this story of the future.”
― Linda Stupart, Virus