Quotes from Octavia E. Butler

We will shape God And God will shape us

I didn't like them when I heard them. I liked them even less when I met them. They look at us as though we smell and they don't. Of course, it doesn't matter whether I like them or not. There are other people in the neighborhood whom I don't like. But I don't trust the Payne-Parrishes. The kids seem all right, but the adults. … I wouldn't want to have to depend on them. Not even for little things.

Sharing is a weakness, a shameful secret. A person who knows what I am can hurt me, betray me, disable me with little effort.

West," I said bitterly. "That's where they're doing it to the Indians instead of the blacks!" He looked at me strangely. He had been doing that a lot lately.

Octavia E. Butler (1947–2006) was a bestselling and award-winning author, considered one of the best science fiction writers of her generation. She received both the Hugo and Nebula awards, and in 1995 became the first author of science fiction to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. She was also awarded the prestigious PEN Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000.

I have watched education become more a privilege of

They forced you to have kids?" the man asked. "One of them surprised me," she said. "It made me pregnant, then told me about it. Said it was giving me what I wanted but would never come out and ask for." "Was it?" "Yes." She shook her head from side to side. "Oh, yes. But if I had the strength not to ask, it should have had the strength to let me alone.

He had a brain and he had courage. He just didn't want to change.

People have changed the climate of the world. Now they're waiting for the old days to come back.

Lilith watched them enviously. They didn't lie often to humans because their sensory language had left them with no habit of lying—only of withholding information, refusing contact. Humans, on the other hand, lied easily and often. They could not trust one another. They could not trust one of their own who seemed too close to aliens, who stripped off her clothing and lay down on the ground to help her jailer.

We're sliding into undirected negative change, and what's worse, we're getting used to it.

We are all Godseed, but no more or less so than any other aspect of the universe, Godseed is all there is—all that Changes. Earthseed is all that spreads Earthlife to new earths. The universe is Godseed. Only we are Earthseed. And the Destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars.

The problem, of course, with throwing people away is that they don't go away. They stay in the society that turned its back on them. And whether that society likes it or not, they find all sorts of things to do.

There were still some Humans who insisted on seeing the ooloi as some kind of male-female combination, but the ooloi were no such thing. They were themselves—a different sex altogether. So

Trade means change. Bodies change. Ways of living must change. Did you think your children would only look different?

Change is ongoing. Everything changes in some way—size, position, composition, frequency, velocity, thinking, whatever. Every living thing, every bit of matter, all the energy in the universe changes in some way. I don't claim that everything changes in every way, but everything changes in some way.

There was an English major. He wanted to be a writer and tell our story from the inside—which had only been done thirty or forty times before.

Haven't you seen the men slaves in this country who are used for breeding? They are never permitted to learn what it means to be a man. They are not permitted to care for their children.

Cities controlled by big companies are old hat in science fiction. My grandmother left a whole bookcase of old science fiction novels. The company-city subgenre always seemed to star a hero who outsmarted, overthrew, or escaped "the company." I've never seen one where the hero fought like hell to get taken in and underpaid by the company. In real life, that's the way it will be. That's the way it is.

Change is ongoing. Everything changes in some way—size, position, composition, frequency, velocity, thinking, whatever. Every living thing, every bit of matter, all the energy in the universe changes in some way. I don't claim that everything changes in every way, but everything changes in some way.

language that his people are free to hear what they want to hear. As for the beatings, the tarring and feathering, and the destruction of "heathen houses of devil-worship," he has a simple answer: "Join us! Our doors are open to every nationality, every race! Leave your sinful past behind, and become one of us. Help us to make America great again.

All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you.

Slaves did that two hundred years ago. They sneaked around and educated themselves as best they could, sometimes suffering whipping, sale, or mutilation for their efforts.

It bothered me very much that they took both women away. The fat crazy woman had been permitted to go about her business until someone resisted. Then both victim and victimizer were treated as equally guilty.