Octavia E. Butler Quotes

Several years ago, when I was about to start a novel, I thought I might get some mileage out of the idea of a civilization in which people somehow felt - that is, they shared - all the pain and all the pleasure they caused one another.

Octavia E. Butler

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Quotes to Explore

• Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself.

  

  Octavia E. Butler
  • Me
  • Myself
  • Story

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

  

  Octavia E. Butler
  • World
  • End
  • Demand

• 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
  • Reality
  • Stop
  • Magic

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

  

  Octavia E. Butler
  • Writing
  • Use
  • Happen

• When vision failsDirection is lost.When direction is lostPurpose may be forgotten. When purpose if forgottenEmotion rules alone.When emotion rules alone,Destruction...destruction.

  

  Octavia E. Butler
  • May
  • Lost
  • Alone

• 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
  • Freedom

• Most of us, if we're not careful, tend to dehumanize the enemy.

  

  Octavia E. Butler
  • Enemy
  • Careful
  • U.S.

• Kindness eases change.

  

  Octavia E. Butler
  • Change
  • Kindness
  • Ease

• 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.

  

  Octavia E. Butler
  • Writing
  • Trying
  • Truth

• 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.

  

  Octavia E. Butler
  • People
  • Good
  • Bad

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

  

  Octavia E. Butler
  • Different
  • Humans
  • Definition

• 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

  

  Octavia E. Butler
  • God
  • Reality
  • Universe

• My characters hope for better lives.

  

  Octavia E. Butler
  • Hope
  • Better
  • Characters

• Every story I write adds to me a little, changes me a little, forces me to reexamine an attitude or belief, causes me to research and learn, helps me to understand people and grow.

  

  Octavia E. Butler
  • People
  • Attitude
  • Changes

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

  

  Octavia E. Butler
  • She

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

  

  Octavia E. Butler
  • Order
  • Phoenix
  • Ashes

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

  

  Octavia E. Butler
  • Know
  • Realize
  • Loneliness

• When I was between 2 and 3 years old, I got to know my first non-human being. The non-human was a cocker spaniel named Baba. We weren't friends, Baba and I, nor enemies. He wasn't my dog. He belonged to the people my mother worked for, and he lived in the house with them and us.

  

  Octavia E. Butler
  • People
  • Friends
  • Mother

• The child in each of us Knows paradise. Paradise is home. Home as it was Or home as it should have been. Paradise is one's own place, One's own people, One's own world, Knowing and known, Perhaps even Loving and loved. Yet every child Is cast from paradise- Into growth and new community, Into vast, ongoing Change.

  

  Octavia E. Butler
  • People
  • World
  • Children

• 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 E. Butler
  • May
  • Single
  • Dying

• Consider-We are bornNot with purpose,But with potential.

  

  Octavia E. Butler
  • Purpose

• 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 E. Butler
  • God
  • May
  • Fear

• 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 E. Butler

• Religion is everywhere. There are no human societies without it, whether they acknowledge it as a religion or not.

  

  Octavia E. Butler
  • Religion
  • Human
  • Without