Quotes from Octavia E. Butler

Is a pea cut in half one wounded thing or two?

Sometimes writing about a thing makes it easier to stand.

Down on Earth," she said carefully, "there are no people left to draw lines on maps and say which sides of those lines are the right sides. There is no government left. No human government, anyway.

The thing is, we hear gunfire so much that we don't hear it.

It's wrong to assume that I must be a sex you're familiar with," it said, "but as it happens, I'm male.

Most Humans lose access to old memories as they acquire new ones. They know how to speak, for instance, but they don't recall learning to speak. They keep what experience has taught them—usually—but lose the experience itself. We

Human competitiveness and territoriality were often at the root of particularly horrible fashions in oppression.

Partnership is giving, taking, learning, teaching, offering the greatest possible benefit while doing the least possible harm.

These days, projecting blame is almost an art form.

Let go of me." It smoothed its tentacles again. "Be grateful, Joe. I'm not going to let go of you.

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

We caused the problems: then we sat and watched as they grew into crises.

Worship is no good without action. With action, it's only useful if it steadies you, focuses your efforts, and eases your mind

We're survivors, Len. You are. I am. Most of Georgetown is. All of Acorn was. We've been slammed around in all kinds of ways. We're all wounded. We're healing as best we can. And, no, we're not normal. Normal people wouldn't have survived what we've survived. If we were normal we'd be dead.

No. No, Donner's just a kind of human banister." "A what?" "I mean he's like … like a symbol of the past for us to hold on to as we're pushed into the future. He's nothing. No substance. But having him there, the latest in a two-and-a-half-century-long line of American Presidents make people feel that the country, the culture that they grew up with is still here—that we'll get through these bad times and back to normal.

When it comes to strangers with guns," I told her, "I think suspicion is more likely to keep you alive than trust." She

She jumps on me for sharing pain with the living, but she tries to share it with the dead.

Human beings are more alike than different—damn sure more alike than we like to admit. I wonder if the same thing wouldn't have happened eventually, no matter which two cultures gained the ability to wipe one another out along with the rest of the world.

Twenty-five or thirty words are supposed to be enough in a news bullet to explain either a war or an unusual set of Christmas lights.

The Human Contradiction held them. Intelligence at the service of hierarchical behavior. They were not free.

Death Is a great Change— Is life's greatest Change. We honor our beloved dead. As we mix their essence with the earth, We remember them, And within us, They live.

It was literally the best food she had tasted in two hundred and fifty years.

These things frighten people. It's best not to talk about them." "But, Dad, that's like … like ignoring a fire in the living room because we're all in the kitchen, and, besides, house fires are too scary to talk about." "Don't warn Joanne or any of your other friends

I could accept him as my ancestor, my younger brother, my friend, but not as my master, and not as my lover. He had understood that once.