Quotes from Octavia E. Butler

are, too, don't forget. People who poison each other, then disclaim all responsibility.

There are easier ways to say these things," it admitted. "But some things shouldn't be said easily.

I look grim or angry. Better to have them think that than know the truth. Better to have them think anything than let them know just how easy it is to hurt me.

JOÃO CHOSE AAOR. HE accepted help from it and talked to it and caressed its small breasts once he realized that neither it nor anyone else minded this. The breasts did not represent true mammary glands. Aaor would probably lose them when it metamorphosed. Most constructs did, even when they became female. But João liked them. Aaor simply enjoyed the contact.

Every one knows that change is inevitable. From the second law of thermodynamics to Darwinian evolution, from Buddhism's insistence that nothing is permanent and all suffering results from our delusions of permanence to the third chapter of Ecclesiastes ("To everything there is a season"), change is part of life

Amid all this, somehow, the United States of America suffered a major nonmilitary defeat. It lost no important war, yet it did not survive the Pox. Perhaps it simply lost sight of what it once intended to be, then blundered aimlessly until it exhausted itself.

Jarret condemns the burnings, but does so in such mild language that his people are free to hear what they want to hear.

It means that Change is the one unavoidable, irresistible, ongoing reality of the universe. To us, that makes it the most powerful reality, and just another word for God.

All I need is fresh human blood when I'm healthy and everything's normal. I need fresh meat for healing injuries and illnesses, for sustaining growth spurts, and for carrying a child.

I like them, and … they're all I have left. But I need more time to decide. It's no small thing to commit yourself to other people.

Oh hell. If I could just find a balance between holding back too much and pushing, poaching.

Serious misbehavior is harder to get away with, harder even to begin when everyone who sees you knows who you are, where you live, who your family is, and whether you have any business doing what you're doing.

They say we have no business wasting time or money in space when there are so many people suffering here on Earth, here in America.

In order for me to understand who I am, I must begin to understand who she was. That is my reason for writing and assembling this book. It has always been my way to sort through my feelings by writing.

Life is getting better, but that won't stop a war if politicians and business people decide it's to their advantage to have one.

Humanity in its attempt to destroy itself had made the world unlivable.

Name plus purpose equals focus for me.

She and Harry may be the most loyal, least religious people in the community, but there are times when people need religion more than they need anything else—even people like Zahra and Harry.

I'd rather have the city lights back myself, the sooner the better. But we can afford the stars.

Yet Andrew Steele Jarret was able to scare, divide, and bully people, first into electing him President, then into letting him fix the country for them. He didn't get to do everything he wanted to do. He was capable of much greater fascism. So were his most avid followers.

they knew the cops liked to solve cases by "discovering" evidence against whomever they decided must be guilty. Best to give them nothing. They never helped when people called for help.

If you told those deputies the truth," I said softly, "you'd still be locked up—in a mental hospital.

My god," Bankole said. "This country has slipped back two hundred years." "Things were better when I was little," Emery said. "My mother always said they would get better again. Good times would come back. She said they always did. My father would shake his head and not say anything.

After all, they knew Dad didn't kill Keith. And they knew the cops liked to solve cases by "discovering" evidence against whomever they decided must be guilty. Best to give them nothing. They never helped when people called for help. They came later, and more often than not, made a bad situation worse.