Quotes from Octavia E. Butler

God isn't good or evil, doesn't favor you or hate you, and yet God is better partnered than fought." "Your God doesn't care about you at all," Travis said. "All the more reason to care about myself and others. All the more reason to create Earthseed communities and shape God together. 'God is Trickster, Teacher, Chaos, Clay.' We decide which aspect we embrace—and how to deal with the others.

To get along with God, Consider the consequences of your behavior.

everything was getting worse: the climate, the economy, crime, drugs, you know. I didn't believe we would be allowed to sit behind our walls, looking clean and fat and rich to the hungry, thirsty, homeless, jobless, filthy people outside.

Food prices are insane, always going up, never down. Everyone complains about them.

I get a lot of grief that doesn't belong to me, and that isn't real. But it hurts.

Her main thoughts were still of the loathsome thing she had been tricked into doing—the consumption of animal milk.

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

Cops are not trusting people.

It was milk that had sickened her. Animal milk! These people cooked many things with animal milk!

There are over 700 known dead so far. One hurricane. And how many people has it hurt? How many are going to starve later because of destroyed crops? That's nature. Is it God? Most of the dead are the street poor who have nowhere to go and who don't hear the warnings until it's too late for their feet to take them to safety. Where's safety for them anyway? Is it a sin against God to be poor?

sinful past behind, and become one of us. Help us to make America great again." He's had notable success with this carrot-and-stick approach.

Everything is so soft here,' he said, 'so easy...' 'I know

He rubbed his head again. 'Five years is longer than it sounds. So much longer.

To shape God With wisdom and forethought, To benefit your world, Your people, Your life, Consider consequences, Minimize harm Ask questions, Seek answers, Learn, Teach. FROM Memories of Other Worlds

It would be terrible to be small and foolish.

He frowned a little, shook his head. "You vanished." He seemed to have to force the words out. "You were here until my hand was just a couple of inches from you. Then, suddenly, you were gone. I couldn't believe it. I just stood there. Then you were back again and on the other side of the room.

His air of innocent questioning confused me. Either he really didn't know what he was saying, or he had a career waiting in Hollywood.

He shrugged. "It happened. I saw it. You vanished and you reappeared. Facts.

They're good words. Not good enough to welcome a child into the world and into the community. No words are good enough to do that, and yet, somehow, words are needed. Ceremony is needed.

Vocabulary and grammar are your primary tools. They're most effectively used, even most effectively abused, by people who understand them.

I'm also comfortably asocial--a hermit in the middle of Seattle--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.

I reappeared wet, muddy, and scared to death.

I hold your life and do not take it." They had begun as gestures of trust rather than of affection, but their meaning had grown. Now, depending on the circumstances, a simple lifting of the head—as she had lifted hers to receive his bite—could mean trust, affection, challenge, or contempt. It was, Tahneh thought bitterly, the perfect gesture for a betrayal.

People are setting fires because they're frustrated, angry, hopeless. They have no power to improve their lives, but they have the power to make others even more miserable. And the only way to prove to yourself that you have power is to use