Octavia E. Butler Quotes

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

Octavia E. Butler

• Up
• Growing
• Anxiety
• Lust

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• Love is important. I didn't have the energy to be giving it to somebody else in a way that they deserved, and I knew that. So I've always been scared to go too far with somebody I care for because I knew there would come a day when I'd need to pick up and finish a painting for the next three months. That day is inevitable.

  

  Dan Colen
  • Important
  • Giving
  • Way

• When life knocks you down, keep getting up.

  

  Malorie Blackman
  • Life
  • Up
  • You

• My thoughts fly to the old Icelandic storytellers who created our classics, whose personalities were so bound up with the masses that their names, unlike their lives' work, have not been preserved for posterity.

  

  Halldor Laxness
  • Up
  • Work
  • Thoughts

• I was brought up in a very poor and very violent household. I spent much of my childhood being afraid.

  

  Patrick Stewart
  • Up
  • Childhood
  • Afraid

• It's great, I guess, when your paintings are hanging up in a museum.

  

  Banksy
  • Up
  • Great
  • Museum

• My mom started working at the California Shakespeare Theater in Oakland when I was two years old, so I've always grown up around theater.

  

  Zendaya
  • Up
  • Mom
  • Years

• When I did 'Boyz N The Hood', I never thought how we grew up in South Central was interesting enough for a movie.

  

  Ice Cube
  • Up
  • Movie
  • Interesting

• My roots are in stand-up, and stand-up is very freeing. There's no script involved; you just fly.

  

  Harland Williams
  • Up
  • You
  • Fly

• I'm covered up, but I'm still getting these comments that say I shouldn't be. But the girls who wear the bikinis, they're being told they're too revealing! Enough. It's their body, their choice.

  

  Halima Aden
  • Up
  • Body
  • Enough

• I don't just want to be a cute girl in a comedy or the actress who just does the same thing over and over again. I want to play roles that are distinct. I want to have a more varied career like actresses Viola Davis or Angela Bassett - those are the people that I grew up watching and admiring.

  

  Naturi Naughton 3LW
  • People
  • Up
  • Career

• I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests.

  

  Pablo Neruda
  • Up
  • Poetry
  • Rain

• I don't like giving up hits and stuff, but I try not to show it. I don't want the hitter to see that something bothers me.

  

  Jacob deGrom
  • Up
  • Want
  • Giving

• I think I was just lucky to be brought up in a very musical family. My two older brothers were, and still are, very musical and very creative, and music was a big part of my life from a very young age, so it is quite natural for me to become involved in music in the way that I did.

  

  Kate Bush
  • Life
  • Up
  • Music

• I don't feel I fit in with morning television because I'm like a vampire and I like to stay up late.

  

  Paloma Faith
  • Up
  • Morning
  • Television

• Here's the miracle: I grew up thinking, 'Wouldn't it be great to write 'Superman' someday? Wouldn't it be great to create my own show, or work on 'Lensman,' or 'Forbidden Planet?' Those were very literally the goals I set for myself, the dreams that I thought I didn't have a chance in hell of ever actually achieving. But it's happened.

  

  J. Michael Straczynski
  • Up
  • Work
  • Great

• When we stand up for America, we stand up for what America stands for, which is a safety net for our seniors and really helping our families be able to help themselves.

  

  Barbara Mikulski
  • Up
  • America
  • Help

• My Native American heritage was not embraced by our family, and we grew up African-American, so I didn't have a lot of access or history to that line of my family.

  

  Tamara Tunie
  • Up
  • Family
  • American

• For almost seventy years the life insurance industry has been a smug sacred cow feeding the public a steady line of sacred bull.

  

  Ralph Nader
  • Life
  • Years
  • Insurance

• I have a pet peeve about bands that don't play their hits. I think it's kind of selfish.

  

  Art Alexakis
  • Selfish
  • Pet

• When I started The Shins, it really was just me, alone, but it was still The Shins. I was totally recording stuff and writing songs as The Shins and all of that. So the beginning inception of the whole thing was some sort of a lie, I guess.

  

  James Mercer Broken Bells
  • Writing
  • Alone
  • Beginning

• I grew up with three little brothers. Every Christmas, we'd have piles of toy trucks and Lincoln Logs and G.I. Joes under the tree. Those were for them. For me? My No. 1 favorite present of all time: books. Two or three tall stacks of wonderful stories that I could lose myself in for weeks.

  

  Karen Robards
  • Up
  • Time
  • Myself

• All that time that we spend tweeting our thoughts and emotions to our next of kin, we could be writing the great American novel, starting a business, or just living.

  

  Alexandra Petri
  • Time
  • Great
  • Writing

• I watch a lot of Turner Classic movies. But I don't do private screenings. I don't have the old school, reel to reel projectors. I do have a big screen TV, though.

  

  Leonardo DiCaprio
  • School
  • Movies
  • Screen

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

  

  Octavia E. Butler
  • Up
  • Growing
  • Anxiety