Strength is taking charge of your own destiny and not waiting on others to do so.
You don’t have to swear and drink and beat people up and slay monsters. You’re allowed to cry and take care of children and cook and get your heart broken and dress up and date and get pregnant. But when decisions have to be made, a strong character makes them and doesn’t wait for someone else.
Politics is almost never violent toward the people who are actually making the political decisions.
Self-preservation is one of the signs of sentient life.
One of my Black ancestors was photographed carrying diapers over his head after a flood. They called him a ‘looter.’ A white man was photographed doing the same thing. They called him a ‘survivor.
Paul lay in his room, letting the sick, glorious feeling of grease and carbohydrates carry him away. He wanted to think of nothing more than the feeling of his stomach, obscenely full for the first time ever.
Get a degree in mechanical engineering, Hiro. Get a pilot’s license, Hiro. Learn meditation and hypnosis, Hiro. Slip your roommate out of prison, Hiro. Drive thousands of clones and humans around in space, Hiro. Sit on your butt for four hundred years, Hiro.’
That’s what they told me. Not once did they say, Get shot and chased and stabbed by crazed crewmates, Hiro!”
“To be fair, you were one of the people doing the chasing, crazed at the time too,” Maria said.
“Semantics,” he said.