Octavia E. Butler quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Octavia E. Butler

Octavia E. Butler Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Octavia E. Butler on Wise Famous Quotes.

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

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

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

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

A 10-pound sack of potatoes lasts a long time.

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

My characters hope for better lives.

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

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

I learned that five- and-six-year-old kids have already figured out how to be intolerant.

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

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.

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

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

Twenty-five or thirty words are supposed to be enough in a news bullet to explain either a war or an unusual set of Christmas lights.

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

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

Kindness eases change
Love quiets fear

If vampires were a separate species, and they were into genetic engineering, what would they engineer for?

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

Slavery was a long slow process of dulling.

Leave your sinful past behind, and become one of us. Help us to make America great again." He

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

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.

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

He was like me - a kindred spirit crazy enough to keep on trying.

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.

Getting your writing criticized can be a lot like getting skinned, and you respond to it just as enthusiastically.

I pecked my stories out two-fingered on the Remington portable typewriter my mother had bought me. I had begged for it when I was ten.

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

In my years, I have seen that people must be their own gods and make their own good fortune. The bad will come or not come anyway.

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.

I'm a pessimist if I'm not careful, a feminist, a Black, ... an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty, and drive.

Bloodchild" is my pregnant man story.

I had novels to write, so I wrote them.

She jumps on me for sharing pain with the living, but she tries to share it with the dead.

That which could hunger, could starve.

Repressive societies always seemed to understand the danger of "wrong" ideas.

The world is full of painful stories. Sometimes it seems as though there aren't any other kind ...

Intelligence is relatively new to life on Earth, but your hierarchical tendencies are ancient.

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

Such leaders knew that they could depend on fear, suspicion, hatred, need, and greed to arouse patriotic support for war.

Movies are extremely imitative of one another. Whatever works, people will try to do it.

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

Daddy's the only man I know," he said softly, "who cares as much about giving his word to a black as to a white.

I lost an arm on my last trip home.

Too. A woman should have something of her own. Doro

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

I think we need people with stronger ideals than John Kerry or Bill Clinton. I think we need people with more courage and vision.

Your desires, Whether or not you achieve them Will determine who you become.

I wanted to write a novel that would make others feel the history: the pain and fear that black people have had to live through in order to endure.

I had a long period of writing what I think of as 'save the world' novels. 'Fledgling' was a chance to play.

Embrace diversity. Unite - Or be divided, robbed, ruled, killed By those who see you as prey. Embrace diversity Or be destroyed.

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

Sensible. Conservative and sensible and mature and *wrong*. Very much in character with Joanne.

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

I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell.

Belief Initiates and guides action - Or it does nothing.

Help us to make America great again.

I'm sorry that astronaut will be brought back from her own chosen heaven.

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

I don't write about good and evil with this enormous dichotomy. I write about people. I write about people doing the kinds of things that people do.

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.

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.

to be aware of a place where blackness was not a mark of slavery.

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.

Could she give Doro what he wanted - what she herself had wanted for so long - children who would not die?

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

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

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

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

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.

How dull it is to have people defining you.

When your rage is choking you, it is best to say nothing.

Your people contain incredible potential, but they die without using much of it.

There is no power in having strength and brains, and yet waiting for God to fix things for you or take revenge for you.

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

I think people really need to think what it's like to have all of society arrayed against you.

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.

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

When it comes to strangers with guns," I told her, "I think suspicion is more likely to keep you alive than trust." She

We are a naturally hierarchical species.

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.

The big talent is persistence.

All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change.

Delusional pain hurts just as much as pain from actual trauma. So what if it's all in your head?

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

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.

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

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

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

Gather information. Seek weakness. Watch, wait, and do what you have to to stay alive!

You controlled both animals and people by controlling their reproduction - controlling it absolutely.

Science fiction is not formulaic.

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

She learned quickly that it was not good to be too different. Great differences caused envy, suspicion, fear, charges of witchcraft.

Science fiction frees you to go anyplace and examine anything.

We give lip service to acceptance, as though acceptance were enough.

Too many writers get into that gross-'em-out factor.

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