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Octavia Butler
105 quotes
“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.”
Octavia Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Octavia Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A pet. In pets, free will was tolerated only as long as the pet owner found it amusing.”
Octavia Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm. (beginning of Prologue)”
Octavia Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Margaret Weylin complained because she couldn’t find anything to complain about.”
Octavia Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There was no shame in raping a black woman, but there could be shame in loving one. (p124)”
Octavia Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Slavery was a long slow process of dulling. (p183)”
Octavia Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There're are worse things than being dead." (p253)”
Octavia Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sometimes, one must become a master to avoid becoming a slave.”
Octavia Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She glanced at him. “What gods do you respect?” “None.” “And why not?” “I help myself,” he said.”
Octavia Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Octavia Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Short-lived people, people who could die, did not know what enemies loneliness and boredom could be.”
Octavia Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You’re bright,” Lupe said to her softly. “Very bright, but stubborn. You think you can choose your realities. You can’t.”
Octavia Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Octavia Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Octavia Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She found more gratification in teaching one willing student than a dozen resentful ones.”
Octavia Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Octavia Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Octavia Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you don’t care about my people, why should I care about yours?”
Octavia Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He thought about that for a moment, wondered what he should say. The truth or nothing. The truth.”
Octavia Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Octavia Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life was treasure. The only treasure.”
Octavia Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Helpless lust and unreasoning anxiety were just part of growing up.”
Octavia Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change. God Is Change.”
Octavia Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Dad decided not to vote for Donner after all. He didn’t vote for anyone. He said politicians turned his stomach.”
Octavia Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Octavia Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Octavia Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People have changed the climate of the world. Now they’re waiting for the old days to come back’”
Octavia Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A tree Cannot grow In its parents’ shadows.”
Octavia Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Destiny of Earthseed Is to take root among the stars.”
Octavia Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Octavia Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Civilization is to groups what intelligence is to individuals. It is a means of combining the intelligence of many to achieve ongoing group adaptation.”
Octavia Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source