Octavia E. Butler Quotes

“Intelligence does enable you to deny facts you dislike.”

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

“We are born not with purpose, but with potential.”

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

“A tree cannot grow in its parents’ shadows.”

““I didn’t want to scare you. We don’t want to scare anyone.”
“No? Well, sometimes it’s a good thing to scare people. Sometimes fear is all that will keep them from doing stupid things.””

“So he had locked her in the closet. Some of his people, ignorant and fearful, could not quite believe her illness was not contagious. Badger locked her away from them for her own safety. She had seen for herself how eager they were to get her out of their sight.”

“No one thought about what kind of society we were building with such stupid decisions. People who could afford to educate their children in private schools were glad to see the government finally stop wasting their tax money, educating other people’s children. They seemed to think they lived on Mars. They imagined that a country filled with poor, uneducated, unemployable people somehow wouldn’t hurt them!”

“We’ve also been laughed at, argued with, booed, and threatened with hellfire—or gunfire. But Jarret’s kind of religion and Jarret himself are getting less and less popular these days. Both, it seems, are bad for business, bad for the U. S. Constitution, and bad for a large percentage of the population. They always have been, but now more and more people are willing to say so in public. The Crusaders have terrorized some people into silence, but they’ve just made others very angry.”

“Civilization is the way one's own people live. Savagery is the way foreigners live.”

“All that you touch
You Change.

All that you Change
Changes you.

The only lasting truth
Is Change.

God
Is Change.”

“Change
is the one unavoidable,
irresistible,
ongoing reality of the universe.
To us,
that makes it the most powerful reality,
and just another word for
God.

Earthseed: The Books of the Living
Lauren Oya Olamina”

“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.”

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

“A victim of God may,
Through learning adaption,
Become a partner of God,
A victim of God may,
Through forethought and planning,
Become a shaper of God.
Or a victim of God may,
Through shortsightedness and fear,
Remain God’s victim,
God’s plaything,
God’s prey.”

“Life was treasure. The only treasure.”

“I didn’t want to scare you. We don’t want to scare anyone.”

“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.””

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

“I can’t do it, Joachim. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. A long leash is still a leash. And Coransee will still be at the other end of it, holding on.”

““Human beings fear difference,” Lilith had told him once. “Oankali crave difference. Humans persecute their different ones, yet they need them to give themselves definition and status. Oankali seek difference and collect it. They need it to keep themselves from stagnation and overspecialization. If you don’t understand this, you will. You’ll probably find both tendencies surfacing in your own behavior.” And she had put her hand on his hair. “When you feel a conflict, try to go the Oankali way. Embrace difference.””

“I might not have believed this if a Human had said it. Humans said one thing with their bodies and another with their mouths and everybody had to spend time and energy figuring out what they really meant.”

“Margaret Weylin complained because she couldn’t find anything to complain about.”

““I’ll tell you,” she said softly. “But you won’t like it.”
He looked away from her. “I asked for the truth. Whether I like it or not, I have to know.””

“Beware:
Ignorance
Protects itself
Ignorance
Promotes suspicion.
Suspicion
Engenders fear.
Fear quails,
Irrational and blind,
Or fear looms,
Defiant and closed.
Blind, closed,
Suspicious, afraid,
Ignorance
Protects itself,
And protected,
Ignorance grows.”

“All struggles
Are essentially
Power struggles.
Who will rule,
Who will lead,
Who will define,
refine,
confine,
design,
Who will dominate.
All struggles
Are essentially
Power struggles,
And most
are no more intellectual
than two rams
knocking their heads together.”

“When vision fails
Direction is lost.

When direction is lost
Purpose may be forgotten.

When purpose if forgotten
Emotion rules alone.

When emotion rules alone,
Destruction…destruction.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell.”

“Drowning people
Sometimes die
Fighting their rescuers.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“Kindness eases change
Love quiets fear”

“If you want a thing--truly want it, want it so badly that you need it as you need air to breathe, then unless you die, you will have it. Why not? It has you. There is no escape. What a cruel and terrible thing escape would be if escape were possible”

“Kindness eases change.
Love quiets fear.
And a sweet and powerful
Positive obsession
Blunts pain,
Diverts rage,
And engages each of us
In the greatest,
The most intense
Of our chosen struggles.”

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

“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.”

“The Destiny of Earthseed
Is to take root among the stars.”

“Jarrett would be easier to take if he cared half as much about children’s bodies and minds as he pretends to care about their souls.”

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

“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. Yet intelligence is demanding. If it is misdirected by accident or by intent, it can foster its own orgies of breeding and dying.”

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

“He was surprised when I ignored him. He is wealthy and arrogant and used to being listened to even when what he says is nonsense—as it often is.”

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

“Civilization is to groups what intelligence is to individuals. It is a means of combining the intelligence of many to achieve ongoing group adaptation.”

“Yes,” he said, “intelligence does enable you to deny facts you dislike. But your denial doesn’t matter. A cancer growing in someone’s body will go on growing in spite of denial. And a complex combination of genes that work together to make you intelligent as well as hierarchical will still handicap you whether you acknowledge it or not.”

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

““I’m not a demagogue.”
“That’s too bad. That leaves the field to people who are demagogues—to the Jarrets of the world. And there have always been Jarrets. Probably there always will be.””

“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.”

“Your God doesn’t care about you at all,” Travis said.
“All the more reason to care about myself and others.”

“If you don’t care about my people, why should I care about yours?”

“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.”

“Some of his neighbors found out what I was doing and offered him fatherly advice. It was dangerous to educate slaves, they warned. Education made blacks dissatisfied with slavery. It spoiled them for field work. The Methodist minister said it made them disobedient, made them want more than the Lord intended them to have.”

““I don’t understand why the sight of you should scare me so,” Joseph said. He did not sound frightened. “You don’t look that threatening. Just… very different.”
“Different is threatening to most species,” Nikanj answered. “Different is dangerous. It might kill you. That was true to your animal ancestors and your nearest animal relatives. And it’s true for you.””

“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.”

“I realize I don’t know very much. None of us knows very much. But we can all learn more. Then we can teach one another. We can stop denying reality or hoping it will go away by magic.”

“Tomas stopped and looked at the three Oankali. “Do you believe in spirits?”
“We believe in life,” Ahajas said.
“Life after death?”
Ahajas smoothed her tentacles briefly in agreement. “When I’m dead,” she said, “I will nourish other life.”
“But I mean—”
“If I died on a lifeless world, a world that could sustain some form of life if it were tenacious enough, organelles within each cell of my body would survive and evolve. In perhaps a thousand million years, that world would be as full of life as this one.”
“…it would?”
“Yes. Our ancestors have seeded a great many barren worlds that way. Nothing is more tenacious than the life we are made of. A world of life from apparent death, from dissolution. That’s what we believe in.”
“Nothing more?””

“Lilith might be strong enough now to handle troublemakers herself, but she did not want to do that unless she had to. It would not help the people become a community, and if they could not unite, nothing else they did would matter.”

“He showed me his fantastic library first, and that helped me warm to him a little. A guy with a room like that in his house couldn’t be all bad.”