"What dreams you white-frocked kiddies have in the sanctified cloister of your laboratories. You can make yourself believe anything after a while. As long as you can make up a measurement for it."
— Richard Matheson

"An eye for an eye, and the whole world would be blind.
"
— Kahlil Gibran

"Only those who attempt the absurd...will achieve the impossible. I think ...I think it's in my basement...Let me go upstairs and check."
— M.C. Escher

"When the last living thing
Has died on account of us,
How poetical it would be
If Earth could say,
In a voice floating up
Perhaps
From the floor
Of the Grand Canyon,
"It is done."
People did not like it here."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"You realize that our mistrust of the future makes it hard to give up the past."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Survivor)

"Our real discoveries come from chaos, from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolish."
— Chuck Palahniuk

"Every last minute of my life has been preordained and I'm sick and tired of it.
How this feels is I'm just another task in God's daily planner: the Italian Renaissance penciled in for right after the Dark Ages.
...
The Information Age is scheduled immediately after the Industrial Revolution. Then the Postmodern Era, then the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
Famine. Check. Pestilence. Check. War. Check. Death. Check.
And between the big events, the earthquakes and the tidal waves, God's got me squeezed in for a cameo appearance. Then maybe in thirty years, or maybe next year, God's daily planner has me finished."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Survivor)

"When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat?"
— Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)

"I've met God across his long walnut desk with his diplomas hanging on the wall behind him, and God asks me, "Why?" Why did I cause so much pain? Didn't I realize that each of us is a sacred, unique snowflake of special unique specialness? Can't I see how we're all manifestations of love? I look at God behind his desk, taking notes on a pad, but God's got this all wrong. We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens. And God says, "No, that's not right." Yeah. Well. Whatever. You can't teach God anything."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)

"A journey to nowhere starts with a single step, too."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Survivor)

"The unreal is more powerful than the real. Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because its only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on. If you can change the way people think. The way they see themselves. The way they see the world. You can change the way people live their lives. That's the only lasting thing you can create."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Choke)

"The only difference between martyrdom and suicide is press coverage."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Survivor: A Novel)

"You know how both life and porno movies end. The only difference is life starts with the orgasm."
— Chuck Palahniuk

"Some stories, you use up. Others use you up."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Haunted)

"Surround yourself with human beings. They are easier to fight for than principles"
— Ian Fleming

"All that you touch
You Change.

All that you Change
Changes you.

The only lasting truth
is Change.

God
is Change.

EARTHSEED:THE BOOKS OF LIVING"
— Octavia E. Butler (Parable of the Sower)

"In order to rise
From its own ashes
A phoenix
First
Must
Burn.
"
— Octavia Butler-Earthseed the Books of the Living

"Embrace diversity.
Unite-
Or be divided,
robbed,
ruled,
killed
By those who see you as prey.
Embrace diversity
Or be destroyed.

Earthseed: The Books of the Living
Lauren Oya Olamina"
— Octavia Butler (Parable of the Sower/Talents)

"Your teachers
Are all around you.
All that you perceive,
All that you experience,
All that is given to you
or taken from you,
All that you love or hate,
need or fear
Will teach you-
If you will learn.
God is your first
and your last teacher.
God is your harshest teacher:
subtle,
demanding.
Learn or die.

Earthseed: The Books of the Living
Lauren Oya Olamina"
— Octavia Butler (Parable of the Sower/Talents)

"When apparent stability disintegrates,
As it must-
God is Change-
People tend to give in
To fear and depression,
To need and greed.
When no influence is strong enough
To unify people
They divide.
They struggle,
One against one,
Group against group,
For survival, position, power.
They remember old hates and generate new ones,
The create chaos and nurture it.
They kill and kill and kill,
Until they are exhausted and destroyed,
Until they are conquered by outside forces,
Or until one of them becomes
A leader
Most will follow,
Or a tyrant
Most fear.

Earthseed: The Books of the Living
Lauren Oya Olamina"
— Octavia E. Butler

"Change
is the one unavoidable,
irresistible,
ongoing reality of the universe.
To us,
that makes it the most powerful reality,
and just another word for
God.

Earthseed: The Books of the Living
Lauren Oya Olamina"
— Octavia E. Butler

"You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it."
— Malcolm X (By Any Means Necessary)

"If you don't stand for something you will fall for anything."
— Malcolm X

"My alma mater was books, a good library.... I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity."
— Malcolm X

"I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I'm a human being, first and foremost, and as such I'm for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole."
— Malcolm X

"Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today."
— Malcolm X

"Truth is on the side of the oppressed."
— Malcolm X

"So early in my life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise."
— Malcolm X (The Autobiography of Malcolm X)

"If you have no critics you'll likely have no success. "
— Malcolm X

"Hence I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight."
— Malcolm X (The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley)

"How can you thank a man for giving you what's already yours? How then can you thank him for giving you only part of what is yours?"
— Malcolm X

"I for one believe that if you give people a thorough understanding of what confronts them and the basic causes that produce it, they'll create their own program, and when the people create a program, you get action."
— Malcolm X

"We declare our right on this earth...to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary."
— Malcolm X

"Don't be bitter. Remember Lot's wife when they kill me, and they surely will. You have to use all of your energy to do what it is you have to do. [To his wife Betty Shabazz]"
— Malcolm X

"In fact, once he is motivated no one can change more completely than the man who has been at the bottom. I call myself the best example of that."
— Malcolm X (The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley)

"We need more light about each other. Light creates understanding, understanding creates love, love creates patience, and patience creates unity."
— Malcolm X

"The ability to read awoke inside of me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive."
— Malcolm X (The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley)

"Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery."
— Malcolm X

"It is only after slavery and prison that the sweetest appreciation of freedom can come. "
— Malcolm X (The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley)

" I tell sincere white people, 'Work in conjunction with us- each of us working among our own kind.' Let sincere white individuals find all other white people they can who feel as they do- and let them form their own all-white groups, to work trying to convert other white people who are thinking and acting so racist. Let sincere whites go and teach non-violence to white people!
We will completely respect our white co-workers. They will deserve every credit. We will give them every credit. We will meanwhile be working among our own kind, in our own black communities- showing and teaching black men in ways that only other black men can- that the black man has got to help himself. Working separately, the sincere white people and sincere black people actually will be working together.
In our mutual sincerity we might be able to show a road to the salvation of America's very soul.
"
— Malcolm X (The Autobiography of Malcolm X)

"And because I had been a hustler, I knew better than all whites knew, and better than nearly all of the black 'leaders' knew, that actually the most dangerous black man in America was the ghetto hustler. Why do I say this? The hustler, out there in the ghetto jungles, has less respect for the white power structure than any other Negro in North America. The ghetto hustler is internally restrained by nothing. He has no religion, no concept of morality, no civic responsibility, no fear--nothing. To survive, he is out there constantly preying upon others, probing for any human weakness like a ferret. The ghetto hustler is forever frustrated, restless, and anxious for some 'action'. Whatever he undertakes, he commits himself to it fully, absolutely. What makes the ghetto hustler yet more dangerous is his 'glamour' image to the school-dropout youth in the ghetto.These ghetto teen-agers see the hell caught by their parents struggling to get somewhere, or see that they have given up struggling in the prejudiced, intolerant white man’s world. The ghetto teen-agers make up their own minds they would rather be like the hustlers whom they see dressed ‘sharp’ and flashing money and displaying no respect for anybody or anything. So the ghetto youth become attracted to the hustler worlds of dope, thievery, prostitution, and general crime and immorality."
— Malcolm X (The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley)

"Before i'd touch a square bitch's slit,
I'd suck a thousand clappy pricks and swim through liquid shit,
They got green puke bewtween their rotten toes,
And snot runs from their funky nose,
I hope square bitches become syphiliitic wrecks,
I hope they fall through their own assholes and break their mother-f#cking necks"
— Iceberg Slim (Pimp: The Story of My Life)

"I knew that it was better to live out one’s own absurdity than to die for that of others."
— Ralph Ellison

"No great man ever complains of want of opportunity."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Words are your business, boy. Not just the word. Words are everything. The key to the rock, the answer to the question."
— Ralph Ellison

"I am an invisible man....I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids - and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me."
— Ralph Ellison (The Invisible Man)

"We look too much to museums. The sun coming up in the morning is enough."
— Ralph Ellison (Shadow and Act)

"Good fiction is made of that which is real, and reality is difficult to come by.
"
— Ralph Ellison

"Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in the face of certain defeat."
— Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man)

"What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?"
— Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man)