Maggie

“those of us who dream of impossible things know just how far we can go when pushed to do so”
― T.J. Klune, The House in the Cerulean Sea

“If you’re some stranger who stumbled over this book by chance—perhaps rotting in some foreign garbage pile or locked in a dusty traveling trunk or published by some small, misguided press and shelved mistakenly under Fiction—I hope to every god you have the guts to do what needs doing. I hope you will find the cracks in the world and wedge them wider, so the light of other suns shines through; I hope you will keep the world unruly, messy, full of strange magics; I hope you will run through every open Door and tell stories when you return.

But that’s not really why I wrote this, of course.
I wrote it for you. So that you might read it and remember the things you were told to forget.

Now at least you can look clear-eyed into your own future, and choose: stay safe and sane at home, as any rational man would—I swear I’ll understand—

Or run away with me toward the glimmering, mad horizon. Dance through this eternal green orchard, where ten thousand worlds hang ripe and red for the plucking; wander with me between the trees, tending them, clearing away the weeds, letting in the air.

Opening the Doors.”
― Alix E. Harrow, The Ten Thousand Doors of January

“We probably didn't know what we were doing thousands of years ago as we hunted some large mammals to extinction. But we know what we're doing now. We know how to tread more lightly upon the earth. We could choose to use less energy, eat less meat, clear fewer forests. And we chose not to. As a result, for many forms of life, humanity is the apocalypse.”
― John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

“About how Mother Nature is not kind, but she is balanced. Every single one of us, from amoeba to blue whale to the tenacious bloom that dares to dream of tomorrow, have their own destiny-fulfilling journey as long as their minds and hearts are open. And how we are all connected by a web that looks gossamer but is stronger than a chain-link fence. And though Nature is tough, she is always conspiring for your success, encouraging you to evolve. You can even hear her if you listen carefully.”
― Kira Jane Buxton, Hollow Kingdom