Octavia E Butler Quotes

As a kind of castaway myself, I was happy to escape into the fictional world of someone else's trouble. ~ Octavia E. Butler

I'm not pessimistic about much of anything. ~ 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 used to give up writing like some people would give up smoking. ~ Octavia E. Butler

Read every day and learn from what you read. ~ Octavia E. Butler

Here we are - Energy, Mass, Life, Shaping life, Mind, Shaping Mind, God, Shaping God. Consider - We are born Not with purpose, But with potential. ~ Octavia E. Butler

Healer that she was, creator of medicines and poisons, binder of broken bones, comforter, could she take the remnants here and build them into a man again?

Doro looked at people, healthy or ill, and wondered what kind of young they could produce. Anyanwu looked at the sick - especially those with problems she had not seen before - and wondered whether she could defeat their disease. ~ Octavia E. Butler

I'm very happy alone. ~ Octavia E. Butler

Frankly, it never occurred to me that I needed someone who looked like me to show me the way. I was ignorant and arrogant and persistent and the writing left me no choice at all.9 ~ Octavia E. Butler

They have no power to improve their lives, but they have the power to make others even more miserable. And the only way to prove to yourself that you have power is to use it. Then ~ Octavia E. Butler

After a few years of watching the human species make things unnecessarily difficult for itself I have little hope that it will do anything more than survive and continue its cycle of errors. ~ 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

With a disaster like global warming, it's too late to worry about when it's looming except to figure out how to adapt to it. ~ 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

why can't I do what others have done - ignore the obvious. Live a normal life. It's hard enough just to do that in this world. ~ Octavia E. Butler

My ancestors in this hemisphere were, by law, chattel slaves. In the U.S., they were chattel slaves for two and a half centuries - at least 10 generations. I used to think I knew what that meant. Now I realize that I can't begin to imagine the many terrible things that it must have done to them. How did they survive it all and keep their humanity? Certainly, they were never intended to keep it, just as we weren't. ~ 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

Science fiction, extrasensory perception, and black people are judged by the worst elements they produce. ~ Octavia E. Butler

Religion is everywhere. There are no human societies without it, whether they acknowledge it as a religion or not. ~ Octavia E. Butler

in an interview Butler has stated that the meaning of the amputation is clear enough: "I couldn't really let her come all the way back. I couldn't let her return to what she was, I couldn't let her come back whole and that, I think, really symbolizes her not coming back whole. Antebellum slavery didn't leave people quite whole."1 Time ~ Octavia E. Butler

Cities controlled by big companies are old hat in science fiction. My grandmother left a whole bookcase of old science fiction novels. The company-city subgenre always seemed to star a hero who outsmarted, overthrew, or escaped "the company." I've never seen one where the hero fought like hell to get taken in and underpaid by the company. In real life, that's the way it will be. That's the way it always is. ~ Octavia E. Butler

We keep falling into the same ditches, you know? I mean, we learn more and more about the physical universe, more about our own bodies, more technology, but somehow, down through history, we go on building empires of one kind or another, then destroying them in one way or another. We go on having stupid wars that we justify and get passionate about, but in the end, all they do is kill huge numbers of people, maim others, impoverish still more, spread disease and hunger, and set the stage for the next war. And when we look at all of that in history, we just shrug our shoulders and say, well, that's the way things are. That's the way things always have been. ~ Octavia E. Butler

If vampires were a separate species, and they were into genetic engineering, what would they engineer for? ~ Octavia E. Butler

In small communities, she believed, people are more accountable to one another. Serious misbehavior is harder to get away with, harder even to begin when everyone who sees you knows who you are, where you live, who your family is, and whether you have any business doing what you're doing. ~ Octavia E. Butler

He could not tell her that he was angry because she did not love him. Even he could not utter such foolishness. Certainly, he did not love her. He did not love anyone except perhaps Isaac and a very few of his other children. Yet he wanted Anyanwu to be like his many other women and treat him like a god in human form, competing for his attention no matter how repugnant his latest body nor even whether he might be looking for a new body. They knew he took women almost as readily as he took men. Especially, he took women who had already given him what he wanted of them
usually several children. They served him and never thought they might be his next victims. Someone else. Not them. ~ Octavia E. Butler

Would you like a tuna-salad sandwich?'
'Yes,' God said. 'Thank you. ~ Octavia E. Butler

To get along with God,
Consider the consequences of your behavior.
Earthseed: The Books of the Living ~ Octavia E. Butler

Let go of me." It smoothed its tentacles again. "Be grateful, Joe. I'm not going to let go of you. ~ Octavia E. Butler

The differences you perceive between Humans - between groups of Humans - are the result of isolation and inbreeding, mutation, and adaptation to different Earth environments ~ Octavia E. Butler

I don't know how much of a market there is for space opera. Just because it's in the movies doesn't mean magazines are buying it. ~ Octavia E. Butler

Yes," he said, "intelligence does enable you to deny facts you dislike. But your denial doesn't matter. ~ 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

I can change myself, but it's an effort. And it doesn't last. It's easier to do as water does: allow myself to be contained, and take on the shape of my containers. ~ 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

She went to him. She adjusted, became a quieter more subdued person. She didn't kill, but she seemed to die a little. ~ Octavia E. Butler

She had learned to keep her sanity by accepting things as she found them, adapting herself to new circumstances by putting aside the old ones whose memories might overwhelm her. She ~ 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

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 told lies.
To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery. ~ Octavia E. Butler

She means the devil with people who say you're anything but what you are. ~ Octavia E. Butler

When I was 7 and went to the zoo with my second-grade class, I saw chimpanzee eyes for the first time - the eyes of an unhappy animal, all alone, locked in a bare, concrete-floored, iron-barred cage in one of the nastier, old-fashioned zoos. I remember looking at the chimp, then looking away. ~ Octavia E. Butler

how could they let insane people gain control of devices that could do so much harm? If you knew a man was out of his mind, you restrained him. You didn't give him power. ~ Octavia E. Butler

Worship is no good without action. With action, it's only useful if it steadies you, focuses your efforts, and eases your mind ~ Octavia E. Butler

The big talent is persistence. ~ Octavia E. Butler

Shyness is shit. It isn't cute or feminine or appealing. It's torment, and it's shit. ~ Octavia E. Butler

Sensible. Conservative and sensible and mature and *wrong*. Very much in character with Joanne. ~ Octavia E. Butler

Bloodchild" is my pregnant man story. ~ Octavia E. Butler

Every story I write adds to me a little, changes me a little, forces me to reexamine an attitude or belief, causes me to research and learn, helps me to understand people and grow. ~ Octavia E. Butler

Most of us, if we're not careful, tend to dehumanize the enemy. ~ Octavia E. Butler

In countries where there are no racial differences or no religious differences, people find other reasons to set aside one certain group of people and generally spit in their direction. ~ Octavia E. Butler

West," I said bitterly. "That's where they're doing it to the Indians instead of the blacks!"
He looked at me strangely. He had been doing that a lot lately. ~ Octavia E. Butler

Rufus had caused her trouble, and now he had been rewarded for it. It made no sense. No matter how kindly he treated her now that he had destroyed her, it made no sense. ~ Octavia E. Butler

Power came the way a child came -- with agony. ~ Octavia E. Butler

We give lip service to acceptance, as though acceptance were enough. ~ Octavia E. Butler

Could she give Doro what he wanted - what she herself had wanted for so long - children who would not die? ~ Octavia E. Butler

Most vampires I have discovered are men for some reason. I guess it's because of Dracula; people are kind of feeding off that. ~ Octavia E. Butler

Everything is so soft here,' he said, 'so easy...' 'I know ~ Octavia E. Butler

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

I'm trying to speak
to write-the truth. Im trying to be clear. I'm not interested in being fancy, or even original. Clarity and truth will be plenty, if I can only achieve them. ~ Octavia E. Butler

My God doesn't love me or hate me or watch over me or know me at all, and I feel no love for or loyalty to my God. My God just is. ~ 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

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

You aren't flawed. I noticed even before I went to my parents that there was a wholeness to you - a strong wholeness. I don't know whether you'll be what your parents wanted you to be, but whatever you become, you'll be complete. You'll have within yourself everything you need to content yourself. Just follow what seems right to you. ~ Octavia E. Butler

I had novels to write, so I wrote them. ~ Octavia E. Butler

Did she struggle for life only out of habit, or because some part of her still hoped that there was something worth living for? ~ Octavia E. Butler

He was like me - a kindred spirit crazy enough to keep on trying. ~ Octavia E. Butler

But tired as I was, I couldn't sleep. I thought of Alice, and then of Rufus, and I realized that Rufus had done exactly what I had said he would do: Gotten possession of the woman without having to bother with her husband. Now, somehow, Alice would have to accept not only the loss of her husband, but her own enslavement. Rufus had caused her trouble, and now he had been rewarded for it. It made no sense. No matter how kindly he treated her now that he had destroyed her, it made no sense. I ~ Octavia E. Butler

My race and sex had a great deal more to do with what people believed I could do than with what I actually could do. ~ 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

Could a creature who had to look upon ordinary people literally as food and shelter ever understand how strongly those people valued life? ~ Octavia E. Butler

We can,
Each of us,
Do the impossible
As long as we can convince ourselves
That it has been done before. ~ Octavia E. Butler

In order to rise
From its own ashes
A phoenix
First
Must
Burn. ~ 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

Writing has been as difficult for me as for people who don't like to write and as little fun. ~ Octavia E. Butler

Jarret condemns the burnings, but does so in such mild language that his people are free to hear what they want to hear. As for the beatings, the tarring and feathering, and the destruction of "heathen houses of devil-worship," he has a simple answer: "Join us! Our doors are open to every nationality, every race! Leave your sinful past behind, and become one of us. Help us to make America great again." He's had notable success with this carrot-and-stick approach. ~ Octavia E. Butler

Well, writing was what I wanted to do, it was always what I wanted to do. I had novels to write so I wrote them. ~ Octavia E. Butler

She glanced at him. "What gods do you respect?" "None." "And why not?" "I help myself," he said. ~ Octavia E. Butler

Better to stay alive," I said. "At least while there's a chance to get free." I thought of the sleeping pills in my bag and wondered just how great a hypocrite I was. It was so easy to advise other people to live with their pain. ~ Octavia E. Butler

Hollywood wants to go for the flash, because that's what a lot of them think science fiction is. ~ Octavia E. Butler

There was no real comfort in being alone with her thoughts, her memories, but somehow the illusion of freedom lessened her despair. ~ Octavia E. Butler

I'm a fifty-three-year-old writer who can remember being a ten-year-old writer and who expects someday to be an eighty-year-old writer. ~ Octavia E. Butler

She just couldn't face caring for a child all alone.'
'People do it all the time.'
'She wasn't "people", she was herself. She knew what she could handle and what she couldn't. ~ Octavia E. Butler

Was an eternity of absolute ease just another name for hell? ~ Octavia E. Butler

A lot of people seem to believe in a big-daddy-God or a big-cop-God or a big-king-God. They believe in a kind of super-person. A few believe God is another word for nature. And nature turns out to mean just about anything they happen not to understand or feel in control of.
Some say God is a spirit, a force, an ultimate reality. Ask seven people what all of that means and you'll get seven different answers. So what is God? Just another name for whatever makes you feel special and protected? ~ Octavia E. Butler

His mistake was in seeing her as a young girl. She was already a missile, armed and targeted. ~ Octavia E. Butler

When I was between 2 and 3 years old, I got to know my first non-human being. The non-human was a cocker spaniel named Baba. We weren't friends, Baba and I, nor enemies. He wasn't my dog. He belonged to the people my mother worked for, and he lived in the house with them and us. ~ Octavia E. Butler

Humans said one thing with their bodies and another with their mouths and everyone had to spend time and energy figuring out what they really meant. ~ Octavia E. Butler

Freedom is dangerous but it's precious, too. You can't just throw it away or let it slip away. You can't sell it for bread and pottage. ~ Octavia E. Butler

We're an adaptable species," she said, refusing to be stopped, "but it's wrong to inflict suffering just because your victim can endure it." "Learn ~ Octavia E. Butler

Simple peck-order bullying is only the beginning of the kind of hierarchical behavior that can lead to racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, classism, and all the other 'isms' that cause so much suffering in the world. ~ Octavia E. Butler

Our adults haven't been wiped out by a plague so they're still anchored in the past, waiting for the good old days to come back. ~ 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

I realized that I knew less about loneliness than I had thought - and much less than I would know when he went away. ~ Octavia E. Butler

I'm still learning how dogged people can be in denial, even when their freedom or their lives are at stake. ~ Octavia E. Butler

Writing is difficult. You do it all alone without encouragement and without any certainty that you'll ever be published or paid or even that you'll be able to finish the particular work you've begun. It isn't easy to persist amid all that. [ ... ] Sometimes when I'm interviewed, the interviewer either compliments me on my 'talent', my 'gift' or asks me how I discovered it. [ ... ] I used to struggle to answer this politely, to explain that I didn't believe much in writing talent. People who want to write either do it or they don't. At last I began to say that my most important talent - or habit - was persistence. Without it, I would have given up writing long before I finished my first novel. It's amazing what we can do if we simply refuse to give up. ~ Octavia E. Butler

Too. A woman should have something of her own. Doro ~ Octavia E. Butler

Science fiction frees you to go anyplace and examine anything. ~ Octavia E. Butler

Self is.
Self is body and bodily
perception. Self is thought, memory,
belief. Self creates. Self destroys.
Self learns, discovers, becomes.
Self shapes. Self adapts. Self
invents its own reasons for being.
To shape God, shape Self. ~ Octavia E. Butler

Human beings are more alike than different - damn sure more alike than we like to admit. I wonder if the same thing wouldn't have happened eventually, no matter which two cultures gained the ability to wipe one another out along with the rest of the world." Lilith ~ Octavia E. Butler

Sometimes I wrote things because I couldn't say them, couldn't sort out my feelings about them, couldn't keep them bottled inside me. ~ Octavia E. Butler

You are a good man," she had observed contentedly. "And it has been too long since I had this." He was surprised ~ Octavia E. Butler