The Archive of Alternate Endings Quotes

“It is easy to forget, but stories need not always have a purpose. We are quick to say that folktales have a moral or a lesson or a creed. But most of the stories that have survived the ages are told for one purpose only, and that purpose is to say this: "Being human is difficult. Here is some evidence.”
― Lindsey Drager, The Archive of Alternate Endings

“... there are two kinds of labyrinths: those you are born into and must escape, and those you choose to enter in search of what lies inside.”
― Lindsey Drager, The Archive of Alternate Endings

“Let us hope that the universe beyond our earth is kinder.”
― Lindsey Drager, The Archive of Alternate Endings

“What is story if not the safe harbor for our most disturbing imaginings? I learned early that the notion of what will come to pass haunts better. But, too, it is about the storyteller—who you choose to trust and why. From where comes your decision to believe the breath that leaves the mouth that tells.”
― Lindsey Drager, The Archive of Alternate Endings

“Which is to say, when enough people have been hurt by coded forms of hate, they will gather and they will start a war.”
― Lindsey Drager, The Archive of Alternate Endings

“Jacob will think: What is at stake in sharing this story? And Wilhelm will think: What is at stake in leaving this story untold?”
― Lindsey Drager, The Archive of Alternate Endings

“He is thinking: How do I begin to build a structure around this loss? How do I reshape my world around the grid of their absence?

The writer is thinking: How does one narrate when faced with a story for which there is no language?”
― Lindsey Drager, The Archive of Alternate Endings

“Maybe we aren't the authors of our own end but minor players in a much more cosmic tale.”
― Lindsey Drager, The Archive of Alternate Endings

“The writer is thinking: How does one narrate when faced with a story for which there is no language?”
― Lindsey Drager, The Archive of Alternate Endings

“To read is to consume, to put the book on the tongue and push it down the throat.”
― Lindsey Drager, The Archive of Alternate Endings

“Most stories that have survived the ages are told for one purpose only, and that purpose is to say this: “Being human is difficult. Here is some evidence.”
― Lindsey Drager, The Archive of Alternate Endings

“Though she cannot read, she knows well that what gets committed to the page, what gets translated into the code of letters and locked in the coffin of a book, becomes truth while everything else dissolves into the abyss of history lost.”
― Lindsey Drager, The Archive of Alternate Endings

“No one alive knows who was born first, and so no one knows in which body he dwells--the original or the copy.”
― Lindsey Drager, The Archive of Alternate Endings

“His invention is for her, and all those who need a way to tell their stories. It is for every sister who once had a story that went unbelieved. When people ask him what he’s invented, he tells them this: a device that will make the world listen.”
― Lindsey Drager, The Archive of Alternate Endings

“To the sky, we are just another natural phenomenon that will leave an insubstantial trace, a fossilized arrangement of bone here, the crater of a long-melted glacier there. If only we were privileged with such distance, perhaps we could see how minor we all are, all our art and thought and illness and meaning reduced to a bit of debris, the detritus on one of a million spheres stupidly looping nothing.”
― Lindsey Drager, The Archive of Alternate Endings

“Wilhelm pensa a cosa significhi narrare. Esiste un modo di raccontare che dia credito alle voci che hanno tramandato la storia?

Jacob pensa a cosa significhi desiderare. Il desiderio richiede partecipazione o può affiorare in segreto, consapevole ma sospeso, nascosto con cura?”
― Lindsey Drager, The Archive of Alternate Endings

“Corpi umani emergono da altri corpi umani, crescono e si allontanano, si abbassano e rallentano, poi si sdraiano e non riescono più a rialzarsi.”
― Lindsey Drager, The Archive of Alternate Endings

“Quando la malattia invade un corpo, sia fatto di carne e tessuti o di roccia fusa e gusci frantumati e vetro e ossa, all'improvviso tutto diventa possibile. Questo è il primo passo per comprendere che tutto muore.”
― Lindsey Drager, The Archive of Alternate Endings

“Il cielo, infinito ed enigmatico, ci ricorda che non possiamo ascoltare la fine di ogni storia.”
― Lindsey Drager, The Archive of Alternate Endings

“[...] Che le svolte sono ingannevoli, nelle storie e nei sentieri. Che nella vita nulla è privo di curve e per questo ogni cosa si intreccia.”
― Lindsey Drager, The Archive of Alternate Endings

“Mouths, the illustrator thinks, this story is fell of mouths: mouths that cannot be fed, mouths belonging to children that fill themselves with the witch's bait, mouths of ovens that consume, the mouth of the witch who wants to eat the children. We think of this as a story about two children abandoned in a wood by thier parents and the way breadcrumbs fail to lead them home. We thinks of this as a story about escaping supernatural atrocities. But perhaps it is really a story about how to eat, who to fill the gut with, and why. Perhaps this is a story about the way the body aches to be satisfied, and how we call this both hunger and desire.”
― Lindsey Drager, The Archive of Alternate Endings