Octavia Butler Quotes

Life is getting better, but that won't stop a war if politicians and business people decide it's to their advantage to have one.

Humans persecute their different ones, yet they need them to give themselves definition and status.

Beware At war Or at peace, More people die Of unenlightened self-interest Than of any other disease

Margaret Weylin complained because she couldn't find anything to complain about.

I was raised Baptist, and I like the fact that I got my conscience installed early.

But my problem with fantasy, and horror, and related genres, is that sometimes the problems are illogical.

Rejections are painful, but inevitable. They're every writer's rite of passage.

There's no narcotic like exhaustion.

Once you grow past Mommy and Daddy coming running when you're hurt, you're really on your own. You're alone, and there's no one to help you.

I began reading science fiction before I was 12 and started writing science fiction around the same time.

Dad decided not to vote for Donner after all. He didn't vote for anyone. He said politicians turned his stomach.

Writing is one of the few professions in which you can psychoanalyse yourself, get rid of hostilities and frustrations in public, and get paid for it.

We're all capable of climbing so much higher than we usually permit ourselves to suppose.

No ... a novel is a long business. I'm a slow writer, even when I'm doing very well I write slowly.

I recognize we will pay more attention when we have different leadership.

Helpless lust and unreasoning anxiety were just part of growing up.

The thing about science fiction is that it's totally wide open. But it's wide open in a conditional way.

I can write my own stories and I can write myself in.

You are horror and beauty in rare combination.

Religion is a dangerous prod, because it can always be misused and get out of hand, but it's useful for keeping people on the straight and narrow.

The only lasting truth is change. God is change.

I'm me, and I'm here, and I'm writing,

To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool.

We give our dead To the orchards And the groves. We give our dead To life.

I have this theory that anything that happens to you that leaves you alive and intact can be used somewhere in your writing.

A tree Cannot grow In its parents' shadows.

Slavery is a long slow process of dulling.

The destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars.

And by the way, I wanted to point out that Kindred is not science fiction. You'll note there's no science in it. It's a kind of grim fantasy.

I would never have been a good scientist - my attention span was too short for that.

There is no end To what a living world Will demand of you.

Be who you are and not who someone else thinks you ought to be.

Science fiction let me do both. It let me look into science and stick my nose in everywhere.

Sometimes, one must become a master to avoid becoming a slave.

Souls! When have you seen your own soul - that you're so certain you have one?

Drowning people Sometimes die Fighting their rescuers.

I'm literate, and the idea of leaving children illiterate is criminal.

Forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable.