And she is gone to rejoin the light everlasting ...

Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be lied to. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.

Octavia Butler, quoting from her novel Parable of the Sower on Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman on 11 November 2005.

Thank you, Ms. Butler, for sharing your shining gift with us. I am perversely thankful that you won't have to see the nightmare of Parable come true. For we are surely led by cowards, fools, thieves, and tyrants.