Spencer Allen

“I do not mean to be sentimental about suffering—enough is certainly as good as a feast—but people who cannot suffer can never grow up, can never discover who they are. That man who is forced each day to snatch his manhood, his identity, out of the fire of human cruelty that rages to destroy it knows, if he survives his effort, and even if he does not survive it, something about himself and human life that no school on earth—and, indeed, no church—can teach. He achieves his own authority, and that is unshakable. This is because, in order to save his life, he is forced to look beneath appearances, to take nothing for granted, to hear the meaning behind the words. If one is continually surviving the worst that life can bring, one eventually ceases to be controlled by a fear of what life can bring; whatever it brings must be borne. And at this level of experience one’s bitterness begins to be palatable, and hatred becomes too heavy a sack to carry.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

“At their core, the principles of civil resistance are inherently democratic: nonviolent campaigns require mass public support and participation if they are to succeed.”
― Mark Engler, This Is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century

“death is not the opposite of life, but the opposite of choice. Death is what you get when there are no choices left to make.”
― Robin Hobb, The Tawny Man Trilogy 3-Book Bundle: Fool's Errand, Golden Fool, Fool's Fate

“Free time was the greatest blessing in the world. Maybe that was why the men of the oceans sought to kill them and steal their sheep. It must make them angry to see such a perfect place as this. Those terrible men, like any petulant child, destroyed what they could not have.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Wind and Truth