Octavia Butler Quotes

I was raised Baptist, and I like the fact that I got my conscience installed early.

All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth is Change. God is Change.

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

To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool.

Drowning people Sometimes die Fighting their rescuers.

Kindness eases change Love quiets fear

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

We're all capable of climbing so much higher than we usually permit ourselves to suppose.

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

Be who you are and not who someone else thinks you ought to be.

I'm me, and I'm here, and I'm writing.

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

That which could hunger, could starve.

I think people really need to think what it's like to have all of society arrayed against you.

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.

The destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars.

Here I was into astronomy, and here into anthropology, and there I go into geology. It was much more fun to be able to research and write about whatever I wanted to.

I have this theory that anything that happens to you that leaves you alive and intact can be used somewhere in your writing.

Forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable.

Humans persecute their different ones, yet they need them to give themselves definition and status.

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

Ignorance Protects itself, And protected, Ignorance grows.

Consider We are born Not with purpose, But with potential.

If there's any single talent a writer needs, it's persistence. If you can keep at your writing and you can learn as you write, you can tell any story you want to tell.

A tree Cannot grow In its parents' shadows.

I'm trying to speak--to write-the truth. I"m trying to be clear. I'm not interested in being fancy, or even original. Clarity and truth will be plenty, if I can only achieve them.

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

The only lasting truth is change. God is change.

You are horror and beauty in rare combination.

I would never have been a good scientist - my attention span was too short for that.

Once you grow past Mommy and Daddy coming running when you're hurt, you're really on your own. You're alone, and there's no one to help you.

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

Science fiction let me do both. It let me look into science and stick my nose in everywhere.

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

...I realized that I knew less about loneliness than I had thought - and much less than I would know when he went away.

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.

No one was going to stop me from writing and no one had to really guide me towards science fiction. It was natural, really, that I would take that interest.

And by the way, I wanted to point out that Kindred is not science fiction. You'll note there's no science in it. It's a kind of grim fantasy.

Positive obsession is about not being able to stop just because you're afraid and full of doubts. Positive obsession is dangerous. It's about not being able to stop at all.

But my problem with fantasy, and horror, and related genres, is that sometimes the problems are illogical.

I recognize we will pay more attention when we have different leadership.

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

No... a novel is a long business. I'm a slow writer, even when I'm doing very well I write slowly.

Nothing. It just finds you a lot more attractive than it does most Humans. What can you do with a beautiful woman that you can’t do with an ugly one? Nothing. It’s just a matter of preference.

The big talent is persistence.

Religion is a dangerous prod, because it can always be misused and get out of hand, but it's useful for keeping people on the straight and narrow.

...I can write my own stories and I can write myself in.

I wanted to write a novel that would make others feel the history: the pain and fear that black people have had to live through in order to endure.

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

The essentials are to learn to shape God with forethought, care, and work; to educate and benefit their community, their families and themselves; and to contribute to the fulfillment of the Destiny.