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Octavia E. Butler Quotes
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Octavia Estelle Butler was an American science fiction writer. A multiple recipient of both the Hugo and Nebula awards, in 1995 she became the first science fiction writer to receive the MacArthur Fellowship.

✵ 22. June 1947 – 24. February 2006   •   Other names Օկտավիա Բատլեր, اکتاویا باتلر
Octavia E. Butler photo
Octavia E. Butler: 107   quotes 29   likes

Octavia E. Butler Quotes

“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

“You’re bright,” Lupe said to her softly. “Very bright, but stubborn. You think you can choose your realities. You can’t.”

Octavia E. Butler book Clay's Ark

Source: Clay's Ark (1984), Chapter 12 (p. 522)

Thinking , Reality

“Freedom is dangerous, Cory, 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.”

Octavia E. Butler book Parable of the Sower

Source: Parable of the Sower (1993), Chapter 11 (p. 122)

Freedom

“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 E. Butler book Parable of the Talents

Source: Parable of the Talents (1998), Chapter 15 (p. 288)

God , People , Evil

“I’m literate, and the idea of leaving children illiterate is criminal.”

Octavia E. Butler book Parable of the Talents

Source: Parable of the Talents (1998), Chapter 20 (p. 405)

Children , Idea

“Now I have been raped.
It happened twice. Once on Monday, and again yesterday. It is my Christmas gift from Christian America.”

Octavia E. Butler book Parable of the Talents

Source: Parable of the Talents (1998), Chapter 13 (p. 253)

Christmas

““He’s a fair man.”
I looked at him, startled.
“I said fair,” he repeated. “Not likable.”
I kept quiet. His father wasn’t the monster he could have been with the power he held over his slaves. He wasn’t a monster at all. Just an ordinary man who sometimes did the monstrous things his society said were legal and proper.”

Octavia E. Butler book Kindred

Source: Kindred (1979), Chapter 4, “The Fight” section 6 (p. 134).

“What will they do when they have only the herbs” he asked her.
“Live or die as best they can,” she said. “Everything truly alive dies sooner or later.”

Octavia E. Butler Wild Seed

Source: Wild Seed (1980), Chapter 14 (p. 247)

“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 E. Butler book Parable of the Sower

Source: Parable of the Sower (1993), Chapter 2 (p. 15)

God , People , Feeling , Understanding

“He thought about that for a moment, wondered what he should say. The truth or nothing. The truth.”

Octavia E. Butler book Adulthood Rites

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

Truth

““It was an old passion,” he said. “I haven’t touched a violin for months. I didn’t know what that would be like.”
“What is it like?” she asked.
He began to walk so that she almost missed his answer. “An amputation,” he whispered.”

Octavia E. Butler book Clay's Ark

Source: Clay's Ark (1984), Chapter 14 (p. 533)

Passion

“She glanced at him. “What gods do you respect?”
“None.”
“And why not?”
“I help myself,” he said.”

Octavia E. Butler Wild Seed

Source: Wild Seed (1980), Chapter 1 (p. 20)

God , Help

“I got up to leave. There was nothing more to be said. He had asked for what he knew I could not give, and I had refused.”

Octavia E. Butler book Kindred

Source: Kindred (1979), Chapter 6, “The Rope” section 4 (p. 257).

“She found more gratification in teaching one willing student than a dozen resentful ones.”

Octavia E. Butler book Dawn

Part IV “The Training Floor” chapter 9 (p. 242)
Dawn (1987)

“We can see that our Councils aren’t games like the tribunals humans have. The work of a Council of Judgment is to learn the truth and then decide what to do about it within our law. It isn’t about following laws so strictly that the guilty go unpunished or the innocent are made to suffer. It isn’t about protecting everyone’s rights. It’s about finding the truth, period, and then deciding what to do about it.”

Octavia E. Butler Fledgling

Source: Fledgling (2005), Chapter 21 (p. 220)

Law , Game , Suffering , Learning

“My ignorance wasn’t just annoying. It was dangerous.”

Octavia E. Butler Fledgling

Source: Fledgling (2005), Chapter 13 (p. 126)

“You're truly free for the first time. What could be more difficult than that?”

Octavia E. Butler book Bloodchild and Other Stories

The Book of Martha
Bloodchild and Other Stories (1995)

Time

“They can create something beautiful, useful, even something worthless. But they create. They don't destroy.”

Octavia E. Butler book Bloodchild and Other Stories

The Evening and the Morning and the Night
Bloodchild and Other Stories (1995)

Beauty

“Who knows what we humans have that others might be willing to take in trade for a livable space on a world not our own.”

Octavia E. Butler book Bloodchild and Other Stories

Bloodchild
Bloodchild and Other Stories (1995)

World

“Don’t you know everything? God smiled. “No, I outgrew that trick long ago. You can’t imagine how boring it was.””

Octavia E. Butler book Bloodchild and Other Stories

The Book of Martha
Bloodchild and Other Stories (1995)

God , Imagination , Smile

“The only way to prove to yourself that you have power is to use it.”

Octavia E. Butler book Parable of the Sower

Source: Parable of the Sower (1993), p. 143

Way

“If everyone could feel everyone else’s pain, who would torture?”

Octavia E. Butler book Parable of the Sower

Source: Parable of the Sower (1993), p. 115

Pain , Feeling

“It’s better to teach people than to scare them, Lauren. If you scare them and nothing happens, they lose their fear, and you lose some of your authority with them.”

Octavia E. Butler book Parable of the Sower

Source: Parable of the Sower (1993), p. 65

People , Fear

“People have changed the climate of the world. Now they’re waiting for the old days to come back’.”

Octavia E. Butler book Parable of the Sower

Source: Parable of the Sower (1993), p. 57

Waiting , People , World , Change

“Sometimes I write to keep from going crazy. There’s a world of things I don’t feel free to talk to anyone about.”

Octavia E. Butler book Parable of the Sower

Source: Parable of the Sower (1993), p. 52

World , Feeling

“People here in the neighborhood are saying she had no business going to Mars, anyway. All that money wasted on another crazy space trip when so many people here on earth can’t afford water, food, or shelter”

Octavia E. Butler book Parable of the Sower

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

Money , People , Water , Food