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“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 E. Butler book Parable of the Talents

Source: Parable of the Talents (1998), Chapter 5 (p. 90)

Life , War , People , Business

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

Octavia E. Butler book Parable of the Sower

Source: Parable of the Sower (1993), Chapter 18 (p. 221)

God

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

Octavia E. Butler book Adulthood Rites

Part II “Phoenix” chapter 15 (p. 383)
Adulthood Rites (1988)

People

“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 E. Butler book Imago

Source: Imago (1989), Chapter III, “Imago” section 7 (p. 710)

Reality

“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.”

Octavia E. Butler book Kindred

Source: Kindred (1979), Chapter 5, “The Storm” section 13 (pp. 236-37).

Education

““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.””

Octavia E. Butler book Dawn

Part III “Nursery” chapter 12 (p. 186).
Dawn (1987)

Understanding , Animals

“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 E. Butler book Parable of the Talents

Source: Parable of the Talents (1998), Chapter 19 (p. 357)

Life , Death , Wisdom , Children

“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.”

Octavia E. Butler book Parable of the Sower

Source: Parable of the Sower (1993), Chapter 5 (p. 58)

Hope , Reality , Learning

“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?””

Octavia E. Butler book Imago

Ahajas became smooth enough with amusement to reflect firelight. “No, Lelka. Nothing more.”
Source: Imago (1989), Chapter II, “Exile” section 12 (pp. 662-663)

Life , Death , World , Way

“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.”

Octavia E. Butler book Dawn

Part III “Nursery” chapter 1 (p. 126)
Dawn (1987)

People , Communication , Strong , Help

“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.”

Octavia E. Butler book Mind of My Mind

Source: Mind of My Mind (1977), Chapter 2 (p. 288)

Guy , Help , Housing

“Are you Earthseed?
Do you believe?
Belief will not save you.
Only actions
Guided and shaped
By belief and knowledge
Will save you.
Belief
Initiates and guides action—
Or it does nothing.”

Octavia E. Butler book Parable of the Talents

Source: Parable of the Talents (1998), Chapter 20 (p. 382)

Knowledge

“Yori, Human purpose isn’t what you say it is or what I say it is. It’s what your biology says it is—what your genes say it is.”

Octavia E. Butler book Adulthood Rites

Part IV “Home” chapter 5 (p. 501)
Adulthood Rites (1988)

“Short-lived people, people who could die, did not know what enemies loneliness and boredom could be.”

Octavia E. Butler Wild Seed

Source: Wild Seed (1980), Chapter 6 (p. 100)

People , Loneliness

“Overall, the Pox has had the effect of an installment-plan World War III. In fact, there were several small, bloody shooting wars going on around the world during the Pox. These were stupid affairs—wastes of life and treasure. They were fought, ostensibly, to defend against vicious foreign enemies. All too often, they were actually fought because inadequate leaders did not know what else to do. Such leaders knew that they could depend on fear, suspicion, hatred, need, and greed to arouse patriotic support for war.
Amid all this, somehow, the United States of America suffered a major, nonmilitary defeat. It lost no important war, yet it did not survive the Pox. Perhaps it simply lost sight of what it once intended to be, then blundered aimlessly until it exhausted itself.”

Octavia E. Butler book Parable of the Talents

Source: Parable of the Talents (1998), Chapter 1 (pp. 8-9)

Life , War , Stupidity , World

“They had clearly feared turn-of-the-century irrationality—religious overzealousness on one side, destructive hedonism on the other, with both heated by ideological intolerance and corporate greed.”

Octavia E. Butler book Clay's Ark

Source: Clay's Ark (1984), Chapter 23 (p. 583)

Fear

“There’s no narcotic like exhaustion.”

Octavia E. Butler book Parable of the Sower

Source: Parable of the Sower (1993), Chapter 17 (p. 200)

“She was too alert, too alive not to have the kind of mind that probed and reached and got her into trouble now and then.”

Octavia E. Butler Wild Seed

Source: Wild Seed (1980), Chapter 1 (p. 18)

“From what I’ve read,” I said to him, “the world goes crazy every three or four decades. The trick is to survive until it goes sane again.”

Octavia E. Butler book Parable of the Sower

Source: Parable of the Sower (1993), Chapter 19 (p. 229)

World , Reading

“How completely, how thoroughly he has stolen my child. I have never even tried to forgive him.”

Octavia E. Butler book Parable of the Talents

Epilogue (p. 446)
Parable of the Talents (1998)

Forgiveness