George Bernard Shaw

“ Everything is possible: everything. Listen. I am old. I am the old serpent, older than Adam, older than Eve. I remember Lilith, who came before Adam and Eve. I was her darling as I am yours. She was alone: there was no man with her. She saw death as you saw it when the fawn fell; and she knew then that she must find out how to renew herself and cast the skin like me. She had a mighty will: she strove and strove and willed and willed for more moons than there are leaves on all the trees of the garden. Her pangs were terrible: her groans drove sleep from Eden. She said it must never be again: ”

“ ADAM [returning] Is there another voice in the garden besides our voices and the Voice? I heard a new voice.
EVE [rising and running to him] Only think, Adam! Our snake has learnt to speak by listening to us.
ADAM [delighted] Is it so? [He goes past her to the stone, and fondles the serpent] .
THE SERPENT [responding affectionately] It is so, dear Adam.
EVE. But I have more wonderful news than that. Adam: we need not live for ever.
ADAM [dropping the snake's head in his excitement] What! Eve: do not play with me about this. If only there may be an end some day, and yet no end! ”

“ She did not know then that imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire; you will what you imagine; and at last you create what you will. ”

“ I am tired of pulling these things up to keep the garden pleasant for us for ever.
THE SERPENT. They do not grow very fast. They will not overrun the whole garden for a long time: not until you have laid down your burden and gone to sleep for ever. Why should you trouble yourself? Let the new Adams clear a place for themselves.
ADAM. That is very true. You must tell us your secret. You see, Eve, what a splendid thing it is not to have to live for ever. ”

“ Then I too willed to renew myself as two instead of one; and after many days the miracle happened, and I burst from my skin another snake interlaced with me; and now there are two imaginations, two desires, two wills to create with.
EVE. To desire, to imagine, to will, to create. That is too long a story. Find me one word for it all: you, who are so clever at words.
THE SERPENT. In one word, to conceive. That is the word that means both the beginning in imagination and the end in creation. ”

“ Your hair streams in the wind as if it were trying to stretch itself further and further. But it does not grow longer for all its practice in streaming, because you have not willed it so. When Lilith told me what she had imagined in our silent language (for there were no words then) I bade her desire it and will it ”

“ When you and Adam talk, I hear you say 'Why?' Always 'Why?' You see things; and you say 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say 'Why not?' I made the word dead to describe my old skin that I cast when I am renewed. ”

“ and you say 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; ”