Octavia Butler Quotes

85 Sourced Quotes

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

Octavia Butler
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.

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

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

Octavia Butler
Tolerance, like any aspect of peace, is forever a work in progress, never completed, and, if we're as intelligent as we like to think we are, never abandoned.

Octavia Butler
Beware:
All too often,
We say
What we hear others say.
We think
What we're told that we think.
We see
What we're permitted to see.
Worse!
We see what we're told that we see.

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

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

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

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

Octavia Butler
I'm not pessimistic about much of anything. No, I'm hopeful. The only problem that we human beings really suffer from, and this is important to us as a species, is that we tend to do the right thing when we get scared.

Octavia Butler
Beware: All too often, We say What we hear others say. We think What we're told that we think. We see What we're permitted to see. Worse! We see what we're told that we see. Repetition and pride are the keys to this. To hear and to see Even an obvious lie Again And again and again May be to say it, Almost by reflex Then to defend it Because we've said it And at last to embrace it Because we've defended it And because we cannot admit That we've embraced and defended An obvious lie. Thus, without thought, Without intent, We make Mere echoes Of ourselves— And we say What we hear others say.

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

Octavia Butler
Humans were genetically inclined to be intolerant of difference. They could overcome the inclination, but it was a reality of the Human conflict that they often did not.

Octavia Butler
Your God doesn't care about you at all, Travis said.
All the more reason to care about myself and others.

Octavia Butler
If you hear nonsense like that often enough for long enough, you begin to believe it.

Octavia Butler
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.

Octavia Butler
Civilization is the way one's own people live. Savagery is the way foreigners live.

Octavia 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 superperson. 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.

Octavia Butler
All religions are ultimately cargo cults.
Adherents perform required rituals, follow
specific rules, and expect to be supernaturally
gifted with desired rewards—long life,
honor, wisdom, children, good health, wealth,
victory over opponents, immortality after
death, any desired rewards.

Octavia Butler
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 Butler
All that you touch
You Change.

All that you Change
Changes you.

The only lasting truth
Is Change.

God
Is Change.

Octavia Butler
The Destiny of Earthseed
Is to take root among the stars.

Octavia Butler
We were snatched away and given alone into the hands of people who believed that it was their duty to break us and remake us in the Christian American image. And, of course, breaking people is much easier than putting them together again.
So much agony caused, so much evil done in God's name.

Octavia Butler
To survive,
Know the past.
Let it touch you.
Then let
The past
Go.

Octavia Butler
If you don't care about my people, why should I care about yours?

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

Octavia Butler
He didn't look all right to me. Has anyone gone for the doctor?
Marse Tom don't hardly get Doc West for ague. He says all the doc knows is bleeding and blistering and purging and puking and making folks sicker than they was to start.

Octavia Butler