Quotes from Octavia E. Butler

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.

Lilith's ability had run in her family, although neither she nor her ancestors had been able to control it. It had either lain dormant in them or come to life in insane, haphazard fashion and caused the growth of useless new tissue. New tissue gone obscenely wrong. Humans called this condition cancer. To them, it was a hated disease. To the Oankali, it was treasure. It was beauty beyond Human comprehension.

a sweet and powerful Positive obsession

Pleasure is rare, pain is plentiful, and, delusional or not, it hurts like hell.

I don't like most Utopia stories because I don't believe them for a moment. It seems inevitable that my Utopia would be someone else's hell.

I wanted to disappear. Instead, I grew to be six feet tall. Boys in particular seemed to assume that I had done this growing deliberately and that I should be ridiculed for it as often as possible.

She was strange now, erratic, sometimes needing my friendship, trusting me with her dangerous longings for freedom, her wild plans to run away again; and sometimes hating me, blaming me for her trouble. One

Could she give Doro what he wanted—what she herself had wanted for so long—children who would not die?

Curt Loehr, the Oankali said, needed people to look after. People stabilized him, gave him purpose. Without them, he might have been a criminal—or dead.

have watched education become more a privilege of the rich than the basic necessity that it must be if civilized society is to survive.

Leave your sinful past behind, and become one of us. Help us to make America great again." He

Once people get the idea that it's all right to take what you want and destroy the rest, who knows when they'll stop.

I couldn't really let her come all the way back. I couldn't let her return to what she was, I couldn't let her come back whole and that, I think, really symbolizes her not coming back whole. Antebellum slavery didn't leave people quite whole.

Just struggling with my own perversity.

Earthseed Cast on new ground Must first perceive That it knows nothing.

Chiedete a sette persone che cosa significa tutto ciò e otterrete sette risposte diverse. Allora cos'è Dio? Solo un altro nome per qualsiasi cosa ci faccia sentire speciali e protetti?

PRODIGY IS, AT ITS essence, adaptability and persistent, positive obsession. Without persistence, what remains is an enthusiasm of the moment. Without adaptability, what remains may be channeled into destructive fanaticism. Without positive obsession, there is nothing at all. EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING by Lauren Oya Olamina 1 All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change. God Is Change.

I was always a doubter when it came to religion. How irrational of me, then, to love a zealot. But then, both love and zealotry are irrational states of mind.

Così funziona. Quel Dio dell'Antico Testamento non contraddice il mondo in cui sono le cose adesso, ma assomiglia parecchio a Zeus. Sembra un uomo potentissimo che gioca con i suoi giocattoli come fanno i miei fratelli minori con i loro soldatini. Bang, Bang! Sette giocattoli cadono morti.

Se sono tuoi, stabilisci tu le regole. A chi importa che cosa ne pensano i giocattoli? Spazza via l'intera famiglia di un giocattolo, poi dagliene una nuova. I bambini giocattolo, come i figli di Giobbe, sono intercambiabili.

This is the biggest lot of abolitionist trash I ever saw." "No it isn't," I said. "That book wasn't even written until a century after slavery was abolished." "Then why the hell are they still complaining about it?

It seems inevitable that people who can't read are going to lean more toward judging candidates on the way they look and sound than on what they claim they stand for. Even people who can read and are educated are apt to pay more attention to good looks and seductive lies than they should.

I've noticed that people who have a little bit of power tend to use it.

In six years, she had gone from nothing to nothing.