Octavia E. Butler Quotes

I do what I can,' I said. 'When I can do more, I will. You know that.

People do blame you for the things they do to you.

We collected all the bones we could find, and yesterday, Natividad wrapped them in a shawl that she had knitted years ago. It was the most beautiful thing she owned."A thing like that should serve the living," Bankole said when she offered it."You are living," Natividad said. "I like you. I wish I could have met your sister.

Octavia E. Butler

Civilization is to groups what intelligence is to individuals. It is a means of combining the intelligence of many to achieve ongoing group adaptation. Civilization, like intelligence, may serve well, serve adequately, or fail to serve its adaptive function. When civilization fails to serve, it must disintegrate unless it is acted upon by unifying internal or external forces.

Octavia E. Butler

I wasn't trying to work out my own ancestry. I was trying to get people to feel slavery. I was trying to get across the kind of emotional and psychological stones that slavery threw at people.

Octavia E. Butler

Then, somehow, I got caught up in one of Kevin's World War II books - a book of excerpts from the recollections of concentration camp survivors. Stories of beatings, starvation, filth, disease, torture, every possible degradation. As though the Germans had been trying to do in only a few years what the Americans had worked at for nearly two hundred. ... Like the Nazis, antebellum whites had known quite a bit about torture - quite a bit more than I ever wanted to learn.

Octavia E. Butler

This is the biggest lot of abolitionist trash I ever saw.”“No it isn’t,” I said. “That book wasn’t even written until a century after slavery was abolished.”“Then why the hell are they still complaining about it?

Octavia E. Butler

I have a huge and savage conscience that won't let me get away with things.

Octavia E. Butler

It's better to teach people than to scare them, Lauren. If you scare them and nothing happens, they lose their fear, and you lose some of your authority with them. It's harder to scare them a second time, harder to teach them, harder to win back their trust. Best to begin by teaching.

Octavia E. Butler

I'm Valerie Rye,' she said, savoring the words. 'It's all right for you to talk to me.

Octavia E. Butler

I found that I couldn't muster any belief in a literal heaven or hell, anyway. I thought the best we could all do was to look after one another and clean up the various hells we've made right here on earth.

Octavia E. Butler

You are hierarchical. That's the older and more entrenched characteristic. We saw it in your closest animal relatives and in your most distant ones. It's a terrestrial characteristic. When human intelligence served it instead of guiding it, when human intelligence did not even acknowledge it as a problem, but took pride in it or did not notice it at all... That was like ignoring cancer.

Octavia E. Butler

Listen, no part of me is more definitive of who I am than my brain.

Octavia E. Butler

Fantasy is totally wide open; all you really have to do is follow the rules you've set. But if you're writing about science, you have to first learn what you're writing about.

Octavia E. Butler

I was attracted to science fiction because it was so wide open. I was able to do anything and there were no walls to hem you in and there was no human condition that you were stopped from examining.

Octavia E. Butler

My relative examined you, observed a few of your normal body cells, compared them with what it had learned from other humans most like you, and said that you had not only a cancer, but a talent for cancer.

Octavia E. Butler

I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm.

Octavia E. Butler

My brother Keith begged to go with us as usual. He'll turn thirteen in a few days - August 14 - and the thought of waiting two more years until he's 15 must seem impossible to him. I understand. Waiting is terrible. Waiting to be older is worse than other kinds of waiting because there's nothing you can do to make it happen faster.

Octavia E. Butler

The essentials," I answered, "are to learn to shape God with forethought, care, and work; to educate and benefit their community, their families, and themselves; and to contribute to the fulfillment of the Destiny.

Octavia E. Butler

When I began to do a little public speaking, one of the questions I heard most often was, "What good is science fiction to Black people?" I was usually asked this by a Black person...What good is science fiction's thinking about the present, the future, and the past? What good is its tendency to warn or to consider alternative ways of thinking and doing? What good is its examination of the possible effects of science and technology, or social organization and political direction? At its best, science fiction stimulates imagination and creativity. It gets reader and writer off the beaten track, off the narrow, narrow footpath of what "everyone" is saying, doing, thinking -- whoever "everyone" happens to be this year.And what good is all this to Black people?

Octavia E. Butler

There is no endTo what a living worldWill demand of you.

Octavia E. Butler

BewareAt war Or at peace,More people die Of unenlightened self-interestThan of any other disease

Octavia E. Butler

If you work hard enough at something that doesn’t matter, you can forget for a while about the things that do.

Octavia E. Butler

Bloodchild" is my pregnant man story.

Octavia E. Butler

Intelligence is ongoing, individual adaptability. Adaptations that an intelligent species may make in a single generation, other species make over many generations of selective breeding and selective dying.

Octavia E. Butler

Everything is so soft here,' he said, 'so easy...' 'I know

Octavia E. Butler

Prayers only help the person doing the praying, and then, only if they strengthen and focus that person's resolve.

Octavia E. Butler

Power came the way a child came -- with agony.

Octavia E. Butler

I began writing about power because I had so little.

Octavia E. Butler

There must be good marriages somewhere, but to me, marriage had the feel of people tolerating each other, enduring each other because they were afraid to be alone or because each was a habit that the other couldn't quite break.

Octavia E. Butler

Read every day and learn from what you read.

Octavia E. Butler

Was an eternity of absolute ease just another name for hell?

Octavia E. Butler

Your teachersAre all around you.All that you perceive,All that you experience,All that is given to youor taken from you,All that you love or hate,need or fearWill teach you--If you will learn.God is your firstand your last teacher.God is your harshest teacher:subtle,demanding.Learn or die.

Octavia E. Butler

People have the right to call themselves whatever they like. That doesn't bother me. It's other people doing the calling that bothers me.

Octavia E. Butler

Consider--We are bornNot with purpose,But with potential.

Octavia E. Butler

He rubbed his head again. 'Five years is longer than it sounds. So much longer.

Octavia E. Butler

He rubbed his head again. 'Five years is longer than it sounds. So much longer.

Octavia E. Butler

Let them see that you trust them & let them solve their own problems, make their own decisions.Do that & they will commit their lives to you. Bully the, control them out of fear or malice or just for your own convenience, & after a while you'll have to spend all your time thinking for them, controlling them, & stifling their resentment.

Octavia E. Butler

I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell.

Octavia E. Butler

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. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.

Octavia E. Butler

First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice.

Octavia E. Butler

There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.

Octavia E. Butler

In order to rise from its own ashes, a Phoenix first must burn.

Octavia E. Butler

God is Change.Earthseed: The Books of the LivingLauren Oya Olamina

Octavia E. Butler

All that you touchYou Change.All that you ChangeChanges you.The only lasting truthis Change.Godis Change.

Octavia E. Butler

Beware:Ignorance Protects itself.IgnorancePromotes suspicion.SuspicionEngenders fear.Fear quails,Irrational and blind,Or fear looms,Defiant and closed.Blind, closed,Suspicious, afraid,IgnoranceProtects itself,And protected,Ignorance grows.

Octavia E. Butler