Octavia E. Butler Quotes
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Religion is everywhere. There are no human societies without it, whether they acknowledge it as a religion or not.
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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.
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Science fiction frees you to go anyplace and examine anything.
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I learned that five- and-six-year-old kids have already figured out how to be intolerant.
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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.
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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.
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We are a naturally hierarchical species.
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'I’m not a demagogue.''That’s too bad. That leaves the field to people who are demagogues-to the Jarrets of the world. And there have always been Jarrets. Probably there always will be.'
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I'm not pessimistic about much of anything.
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If vampires were a separate species, and they were into genetic engineering, what would they engineer for?
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The big talent is persistence.
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How dull it is to have people defining you.
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With a disaster like global warming, it's too late to worry about when it's looming except to figure out how to adapt to it.
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All that you touchYou Change. All that you ChangeChanges you. The only lasting truthIs Change. GodIs Change.
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Getting your writing criticized can be a lot like getting skinned, and you respond to it just as enthusiastically.
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Beware, all too often we say what we hear others say. We think what we are told that we think. We see what we are permitted to see. Worse, we see what we are told that we see.
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Not everyone has been a bully or the victim of bullies, but everyone has seen bullying, and seeing it, has responded to it by joining in or objecting, by laughing or keeping silent, by feeling disgusted or feeling interested.
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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.
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I'm comfortably asocial - a hermit in the middle of a large city, a pessimist if I'm not careful, a feminist, a black, a former Baptist, an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty and drive.
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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.
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Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over.
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Writing has been as difficult for me as for people who don't like to write and as little fun.
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I had a long period of writing what I think of as 'save the world' novels. 'Fledgling' was a chance to play.
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Better to stay alive," I said. "At least while there's a chance to get free." I thought of the sleeping pills in my bag and wondered just how great a hypocrite I was. It was so easy to advise other people to live with their pain.