One hundred and fifty years of Alice's adventures in Wonderland, and she's still going strong having never been out of print, and still more film adaptions on the way. This iconic and bizarre story has inspired countless people and pursuits. Tell me, has Wonderland ever inspired you? and how?
And the fact that I write feminist stories for children MUST be owed - at least in part - to Alice.
Sorry, I should have pointed out that those first 3 quotes inspire my writing style. It's not JUST that I admire them.
"Curiouser and curiouser!”
and
`Cheshire Puss,' she began [...] `Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'
`That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.
`I don't much care where--' said Alice.
`Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.
`--so long as I get SOMEWHERE,' Alice added as an explanation.
and
`But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
`Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: `we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.'
`How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.
`You must be,' said the Cat, `or you wouldn't have come here.'
If we're restricting this to Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, I'm not allowed to quote from Through The Looking Glass (And What Alice Found There). And - restricting myself to Alice's Adventures In Wonderland - I'll tell you that it's tied for 1st place as my favourite book of all time... tied with Through The Looking Glass (And What Alice Found There) and Woman On The Edge Of Time by Marge Piercy.
That 2 books written by a life-long bachelor in the mid 19th century should have presented us with one of the strongest female character's in fiction is quite amazing. That a grown man without children of his own should have shown such understanding of a child's way of seeing things is wonderful.
Still she haunts me phantomwise:
Alice moving under skies,
Never seen by waking eyes.
I've copied and pasted the 2nd and 3rd quotes (the ones with the Chesire Cat) from Internet to make sure that I got them word perfect. But the other 2 ("Curiouser and curiouser!” and the poem) are from memory.