“Repressive societies always seemed to understand the danger of 'wrong' ideas.”
"Simple peck-order bullying is only the beginning of the kind of hierarchical behavior that can lead to racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, classism, and all the other 'isms' that cause so much suffering in the world."
- Octavia E. Butler
Awareness
"You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it."
- Octavia E. Butler
Motivation
"Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself."
- Octavia E. Butler
Creativity
"Human beings are more alike than different—damn sure more alike than we like to admit."
- Octavia E. Butler
Connection to Earth
"The big talent is persistence."
- Octavia E. Butler
Persistence
"Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful."
- Joshua J. Marine
Adversity
"The greater the difficulty, the more the glory in surmounting it."
- Epicurus
Adversity
"It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness."
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Adversity
"The battles that count aren’t the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself—the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us—that’s where it’s at."
- Jesse Owens
Adversity
"If there is no struggle, there is no progress."
- Frederick Douglass
Adversity